


I'm Your Savior

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: Misadventures of the SI-5's Best Agents [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Asexuality, Blood and Gore, Found Family, Gen, Goddard Futuristics, Jacobi POV, Kepler POV, Maxwell POV, Pre-Canon, Prostheses, Queerplatonic Relationships, SI-5, Violence, denial of the most recent episode, mentions of child abuse, mistreatment of endangered species, study of character relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-03 13:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8716171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: After an SI-5 mission goes FUBAR Jacobi's job -- and life -- hang in the balance.  Maxwell is determined to save him.  Cutter doesn't know if it's worth the resources.  And Kepler?  It's hard to say just whose side he's on.Plus, an extremely determined and destructive bee, exploding ketchup bottles, "and my poor fool is hanged," a benzene molecule, Jaws: The Revenge, Maxwell's feet, a sentient microwave, and Rocobi.





	1. SNAFU

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daniel-jacobi on tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=daniel-jacobi+on+tumblr).



> Takes place in July of 2014.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SNAFU  
> Noun. Military Slang. Abbreviation. "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up."  
> A ridiculously chaotic situation.

Jacobi was right about one thing: it wasn’t his fault.

  
Maxwell was always certain that when he inevitably horrifically maimed himself it would be on him; they even had a bet going. By the time Maxwell met Jacobi it was a decade after he had received the immense burn on his right arm and side from a highly volatile experimental explosive.  The particular compound that burned him had since been perfected – he used it often in his work for Goddard Futuristics – but back in his MIT days, when he first invented it, it was sensitive and unpredictable. Its first trial was outside one of the labs on campus and it didn't go well. The blast was far larger than anticipated. It took out an aureole of the lawn and burned the stone side of the building. One of the casualties was a tree that, a few years earlier, Maxwell herself had studied under after her lab closed for the night. He'd managed to save his face by covering it with his right arm, twisting himself away from the blast. His right side was now a patchwork of burn scars from that accident. They started at his right forearm and went to the shoulder in patches. The  bicep was largely unscathed, but his side, a part of his chest and back were burned. He soon perfected the recipe and it was one of his finest and most widely used creations, but that didn't make the scar fade.

  
It was that burn scar in particular that made Maxwell tell him on more than one occasion that sooner or later he was going to blow off something important. A leg. An arm. His head. She cited other scars he’d earned over years of playing with fire as further evidence to support her claim.  Jacobi always laughed it off. The huge scar and the dozens of smaller ones were a kid's mistakes. He was better than that now. He was the best. Fifty bucks said that if he got maimed now it would be because of something else entirely.

  
And he was right. It was.

  
The mission that would nearly cost Jacobi everything was a simple one. It should have been easy. Later, looking back on it, Maxwell would curse herself for not being more careful. It just seemed so elementary that she couldn't imagine it going bad. Then it did.

  
Bryan Teel was a British national living in Colombia, the king of his own little cocaine hill. A few years ago, before Maxwell started at Goddard Futuristics, he purchased some weaponry off the company in exchange for a considerable chunk of his revenue and access to his personnel. Unfortunately for him, Teel got a little too cocky, was a little too late on his payments, and GF sent a team to relieve Mr. Teel of a few things. Their tech for one, his life for another.

  
There were four SI agents in his compound that day. In the mansion itself were Teel’s assassin and her distraction. Then in the sub-basement, deep below the earth, were Maxwell and Jacobi. Agent Nyah Wynn, the assassin, had the simplest job: shoot Teel and do it quickly. Mr. Domingo Gonzalez, the distraction, had to keep the old bastard occupied long enough for everyone else to do their jobs. Gonzalez had been scoping out the complex for weeks, Teel knew him well enough and believed he was an easily corrupted government agent out of Bogotá.

  
Meanwhile, down in the maze of Teel’s sub-basement Maxwell and Jacobi did their jobs. Maxwell had to take down any and all computerized security in the complex and get any useful information she could off Teel’s server before Jacobi’s bombs did their job. Jacobi had to physically destroy any tech on the premises and blow the whole place to Kingdom Come. “Kingdom Come” was literally printed on their mission dossier. Jacobi had gleefully pointed it out to Maxwell, grinning like an idiot on their way from Cape Canaveral to the jungle compound. The promise of wanton destruction had that effect on him.

  
Getting into the sub-basement hadn’t been easy. They had to tunnel in from outside the complex’s walls. It had been tight, tense, dark, and muggy. But being paramilitary wasn’t always glamorous or fun and Maxwell was used to that by now. She cut the power before Jacobi burned a hole into a cocaine storeroom. As they went through the halls, Jacobi, like an extremely determined and destructive bee pausing at particular flowers, busily set charges in key locations. He’d given two to Wynn: one to lay in the dead center of the house proper, another for the side of a bookcase in front of Teel’s panic room. Jacobi promised the blast would be enough to completely obliterate even the strongest wall. Between Jacobi and Wynn’s work, the very foundations of the house would crumble at the touch of a button. Jacobi kept the remote electronic detonator on his belt, each explosive could and would be set off separately.

  
Maxwell and Jacobi guided themselves through the windowless labyrinth with blueprints GF had obtained through some corrupt and quite possibly violent means. After what felt like hours they stood in front of Teel’s weapons locker. It was hidden behind a pair of huge electronic double doors, protected by a computerized lock hidden underneath a metal panel. The panel itself was immobile without a very particular key – analog, not electronic. Another job for Jacobi.

  
“I need the light,” Maxwell whispered. Jacobi held his flashlight over her. “And I need you to get me into that panel.”

  
“A ‘please’ wouldn’t kill you,” Jacobi said. She rolled her eyes at him. He slapped a small charge onto the wall and with a sound that was less _boom_ and more _puff_ , the slab of metal folded and fell outward. Jacobi caught it one-handed before it could clatter to the ground while keeping the light on the newly exposed security panel. Maxwell pulled a tiny computer from her bag, a thin translucent touchscreen and keyboard, and carefully attached it to the exposed array. The tunnel was pitch black, but Jacobi kept his flashlight locked on the keyboard.

  
“Hurry up, Maxwell,” he grumbled after a few minutes. Over their headsets they could hear Agent Wynn upstairs, stalking Teel in the dark, and Mr. Gonzalez speaking quietly to Teel and his bodyguards.

  
“You can’t rush genius,” she whispered.

  
“You know what you can rush? Getting the Hell out of here before a drug lord releases the hounds on us!” Jacobi reminded her.

  
“I thought you liked dogs,” Maxwell said without looking away from her screen.

  
“If he sends even just a bug after us I will personally abandon you in this tunnel,” Jacobi told her.

  
“We _are_ in the Amazon,” Maxwell muttered.

  
“So?”

  
  
“We can’t stop here, this is bullet ant territory.”

  
“Were you going for _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_? Because that's ‘bat _country_.’”

  
“Whatever, you got the reference,” Maxwell scoffed.

  
“What the Hell is a bullet ant?”

  
“Oh, just a bug. A little bug that lives in huge colonies and each one has a bite that hurts as badly as being shot. The pain can last for 24 hours and they can paralyze you if you get bitten enough,” said Maxwell perhaps too gleefully.

  
A pause from Jacobi, then, “If we see so much as one of those, you’re on your own.”

  
A loud click told Maxwell and Jacobi that she had done her job. The doors hissed open. Maxwell hung back as Jacobi slipped inside, pulling his bomb kit from his bag. He was looking for the more shoot-y and explode-y kind of security. Maxwell remained outside on her computer and began sorting through Teel’s data as Jacobi searched for and deactivated the explosives, laser grids, and turrets inside the vault. It took some time, but unlike some people Alana Maxwell had patience.  Although she did call “what's taking so long?” into the silent vault after about five minutes. She got a sarcastic but strained, “Ha. Ha.” Jacobi was probably disconnecting something heavy and ceiling-mounted.

  
Eventually, Jacobi returned.

  
“Finished?” Maxwell looked up.

  
“Yeah, all set,” Jacobi answered. The weapons themselves were too dangerous to blow up until Maxwell and Jacobi were out of the complex themselves. But the substantially lightened bag slung over Jacobi's shoulder indicated he set the charges and was beginning to run low on explosives. They were almost done here. “He’s got some favorites of mine in there. Shame to see ‘em go.”

  
“It would be more of a shame if Kepler killed us for not following orders.”

  
“That is also true,” Jacobi agreed. He watched Maxwell sift through data for a few minutes, silence fell over the hall. Then Jacobi spoke again, more slowly, more unsure, “So…are we just that good or was this _way_ too easy?”

  
Maxwell bit her lip and slowly raised her head to look at him. She had been thinking the same thing but almost superstitiously hadn’t said anything aloud. She was about to answer when a scream crackled through their ear pieces loud enough to make them both wince.

Gunfire.

Static.

  
“Raptor? Kissinger? over,” Jacobi asked using their coworkers code names in case they were overheard. He pressed the earpiece closer to his ear as if this would help. The only response was static and distant, slightly distorted Spanish. “Raptor, do you read me? Kissinger, please respond. Over.” Clattering.  A groan.  Movement? Jacobi tried again. “This is Nitramide: if you can hear me you must respond, over.” Distorted Spanish and then a crunch as someone or something destroyed one of the agents’ earpieces. A pause in which Jacobi's eyes found Maxwell's. Yes, _they_ were successful, but _Wynn_ hadn’t been and that might cost them everything.

  
“You just had to open your big, stupid mouth, didn’t you, Jacobi?” hissed Maxwell.

  
Without breaking eye contact Jacobi  jammed his thumb down on the first detonator. Distantly, something exploded. Hopefully that would buy them some time as they high-tailed it out of there. By the time the sound of the initial blast died down they were already running. Through the still-functioning earpiece they overheard Teel flee to his panic room. A panic room that Jacobi had already rigged to explode. Just to be sure, Maxwell pulled out the GF screen to set a trap for him. Jacobi grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along. “Jacobi!”

  
“You can whine at me later when we're not dead!” Jacobi barked.

  
Retreat was never dignified. Maxwell was just glad Jacobi laid the charges beforehand, it meant this was less embarrassing than it could have been. They could have failed to bring the place down. At least now they had completed all mission objectives, even if it cost them two very stupid agents. The pair ran through the complex. It was large, but they had been in larger, and whatever lockdown procedures Agent Wynn had triggered in the mansion above them failed to activate thanks to Maxwell.

  
“And we’re all very proud of you,” Jacobi said when Maxwell pointed this out. They ran full-pelt through the darkened maze of hallways, listening to the commotion above. “When we get back to the States I’ll get you a cake.”

  
“Chocolate this time,” Maxwell answered. “And no sarcastic frosting messages.” A door behind them opened and someone shouted something in Spanish. Maxwell could not quite tell what it was but it didn’t matter.

  
“A lot of people like strawberry, Maxwell!” Jacobi told her through the pin clenched between his teeth. “And there will definitely be a sarcastic message.” He tossed the grenade casually over his shoulder, easily taking out the pair of guards who had been alerted to their presence. He spat the pin out onto the floor. By the time they were finished with this place there would be nothing left to use to track his DNA. Besides, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Daniel Jacobi had been lost to suicide at the age of 29, when he rigged an explosion in the roach-infested San Francisco apartment from which he was hours from being evicted. Nothing of the body was even left to bury...not that anyone came forward for the remains. Maxwell herself died in a car accident last year, another lost corpse no one claimed. SI agents disappeared from their old lives as completely as possible and Goddard Futuristics was very good at making people disappear.

  
Jacobi set off another one of the charges in another part of the complex. They didn’t need anyone else finding them. Maxwell was most annoyed at being forced to flee. Sometimes she had a hard time believing that SI was the best Goddard Futuristics could drum up. Sometimes she thought she and Jacobi were the only two competent people in the whole of the Strategic Intelligence Division, section 5 or otherwise.

  
They – and Kepler, of course.

Major Kepler was competent to a fault. Maxwell was sometimes accused of being unfeeling, but Kepler was something much worse to her mind. He cared. He cared very much and very specifically about success. Nothing else mattered.  No _one_ mattered if they got in the way.  Maxwell wasn’t sure Jacobi could see that about Kepler. He knew Kepler wasn’t his friend, but he did think Kepler was his ally. Jacobi didn’t seem to understand that he wouldn’t always be Kepler’s Golden Boy. Jacobi liked his position at Kepler's side too much to see it was temporary. Maxwell knew Kepler liked them now, while they were useful, but if they turned from ally to liability, she doubted Kepler would do much to save them from Cutter’s recompense. She wouldn’t put it past him to throw them to Cutter himself, tossing chum to a shark so his boat could get to safety.

  
Maxwell and Jacobi climbed up what felt like miles of sterile staircase and were coming to the exit. Maxwell could see light under the distant door at the top of the emergency stairwell. She and Jacobi just had to get off the grounds in one piece. Above them was chaos: yelling, the whine of structural failure, crackling, and the commotion became much clearer as they reached ground level. Whenever the human sounds got too close, Jacobi had set off another explosive elsewhere in the compound, far from them. But now Jacobi had only two explosives left, one on the wall surrounding the complex, one in the weapons locker.

  
She was beginning to think through their escape. The complex was built on the edge of a ravine with a tall brick and barbed-wire wall on the three sides facing the thick jungle. A chain link fence ran along the ravine. There was a dirt road leading to the compound and it was the only road for miles. There was the immense mansion, a security gate, and several guard towers visible from ground level; everything else was beneath the house. The only sub-basement door that lead to the surface, the door they were about to exit, was built parallel to the ravine. It opened onto a car-park, a continuation of that single road leading to the compound from the jungle. Jacobi and Maxwell could cut a hole in the fencing and repel down the ravine (if the guards had been called away from their towers) or make a mad dash down the gentler man-made slope into the thick, flat jungle (if they hadn’t). Just before the door opened, Jacobi punched a few buttons on the remote connected to the penultimate detonator, the one that would blow a hole in the brick wall allowing them a clear getaway into the jungle. He was setting a timer. He was giving them a few minutes to get from the exit of the sub-basement to the wall without giving their pursers a chance to reach their exit before them. He hit the detonator starting the timer. “Five minutes,” Jacobi said. “In case we have company.”

  
Jacobi was still holding the remote as the door opened. He was fiddling with the final explosive. The biggest one. The bomb itself was in the weapons locker and would initiate the chain reaction that would take the entire compound with it. The coup de grâce. “It will be...it’ll be just... _spectacular_ ,” Jacobi assured her when he described the explosive to her on the flight down.  It took him a few seconds to find that word, and even then he seemed unsatisfied with his choice.  He tended to get tongue-tied when he tried to describe explosions, as if there wasn’t a way to properly describe them with simple human language.

He didn’t set its timer or press the plunger. They were stopped before he could.  Just as Jacobi had warned, they were met with a warm reception.

  
“You need to stop talking,” Maxwell told him, shooting a dirty look.

  
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Jacobi muttered. Ten men armed with six guns and four dogs stood before them. Teel himself was missing, and Maxwell knew full well these men were carrying out the last order they would ever receive from him. They probably didn’t know that Teel was dead in his panic room. If Jacobi's explosive didn’t take him out, Maxwell did with the copious amounts of CO2 leaked into the airtight room. Sometimes automated systems and the canned air one had filtering into his safe room got mixed up with the fire protocol and suffocated him. Really, it had been a disaster waiting to happen. Maxwell just ensured the disaster didn’t wait.

  
“¡Manos arriba!” shouted the guard in front, pointing his assault rifle directly at Jacobi's head. One of the dogs growled menacingly.

  
“He said ‘hands—’” Maxwell began but Jacobi cut her off.

  
“I know Spanish, Maxwell, I did go to high school,” Jacobi told her as they both obeyed.

  
“¡Vacíen tus bolsillos y las mochilas!” Empty your pockets and the bags. “¡Y dejen todos!” And drop everything.

  
Carefully they did as they were told. Both Maxwell and Jacobi unslung their bags. Jacobi dropped down the detonator, his gun, his knife. Maxwell took the gun and knife from her belt. She opened one of the pouches on her belt and tossed down its contents, a few extra hair ties. Jacobi pulled an explosive out of his bag. “¿Que es eso?” demanded the leader.

  
“Es una cámara,” said Jacobi, and Maxwell tried to contain her look of surprise. How could he hope to pass that off as a camera? She momentarily glanced over at him and Jacobi did not meet her gaze. He was holding the explosive up eyes locked on the man’s face.

  
“¿Que?”

  
“Can you translate for me?” Jacobi whispered to Maxwell.

  
“I thought you knew Spanish,” Maxwell chided him.

  
“I understand it better than I speak it! It’s rusty!” Jacobi grumbled. A gun cocked in the crowd. “Don’t get us shot over semantics!”

  
Maxwell opened her mouth.

  
“And don’t tell me it’s not semantics!” Jacobi hissed, “Tell him we were taking pictures of the complex for Goddard. Tell him they wanted to see Teel’s resources.”

  
“Really? Okay, okay fine!” she said when Jacobi gave her a look. She repeated what Jacobi said in flawless Spanish.

  
“¡Pruébalo!”

  
“I’m so glad he asked,” Jacobi said smugly. He slammed down on the button and threw it into the crowd.

  
“Technically, it wasn’t a question,” Maxwell said as it exploded. It did so just as it reached the confused men.  A few fired at it while it was airborne, another few fired at Maxwell and Jacobi, but they managed to get out of the way unscathed. In the immediate chaos after Jacobi tossed the bomb, he and Maxwell grabbed the first things their fingers found. For Jacobi it was his remote detonator, thank God. For Maxwell it was her knife. She left her gun lying on the asphalt.  She was momentarily regretful but reminded herself she could use the knife just as well. It didn’t matter aside from the fact that a gun gave her the advantage of distance. But they probably wouldn’t be stopped in the run to the rainforest. Besides, both weapons were untraceable and her fingerprints no longer existed in any publicly known database.

  
There were several fires burning through the mansion – she could see them out of the corner of her eye. Thick black plumes of smoke were oozing toxically out of the already wounded manor house. Jacobi glanced periodically at the mansion, but did not have time to admire his handiwork and knew it. The timer on the penultimate detonator went off, beeping on Jacobi's belt a moment before the wall ahead of them exploded, taking with it a chain-link cage hugging the side of the compound. They were nearly there. Nearly there. A few more feet. They rounded the corner, clearing the debris that had been the strange chain-link pen. Maxwell was just beginning to wonder what had been in it when the answer presented itself with a roar.

  
Jacobi burst out laughing. And as soon as Maxwell saw it through the smoke and dusty haze she laughed too. The chain link cage must have held Teel's exotic pet, because standing in front of them was a tiger. Huge, white, and looming; its yellow eyes all but glowing in the gloom. It seemed startled by their arrival, pacing, sizing them up from about twenty feet away. Jacobi and Maxwell, already breathless from the run nearly fell over from laughing.

  
“Oh God! How James Bond villain can you get?!” laughed Maxwell, wiping a tear from her eye. “Do you think Teel would have said 'this time, Mr. Jacobi, the pleasure will be all mine?’”

  
Jacobi had his hands on his knees, so breathless from laughter and exertion he could barely speak. He managed to choke out, “Or he could have whipped out the ol’ classic, ‘No, Dr. Maxwell, I expect you to die.’ Think he’s compensating for something the classic Persian cat just couldn’t cover?”

  
“I’m sorry we missed the sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads,” Maxwell added. They both laughed uproariously in the sounds of chaos around them: the tiger’s growls, the screams, shouts, and groans of wounded personnel, and the bellow of the growing fires.

  
Then the tiger roared so loudly it rattled Maxwell’s bones and left her ears ringing, startling them both into silence. It came bounding toward them all teeth and claws. It was on a course for her, pouncing, claws extended. Maxwell reached casually into her holster, searching for her Beretta 9mm. It wasn’t there. She left it on the tar at the sub-basement entrance.

  
Suddenly, the tiger wasn’t so funny.

 


	2. FUBAR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FUBAR  
> Adjective. Military Slang. Abbreviation. "Fucked Up Beyond All Reason."  
> Completely messed up or bungled.

The tiger was seven feet and 650 pounds of muscular apex predator barreling toward her chest.  Claws the size of steak knives were extended, jaws powerful enough to break necks and crush bone were open wide, exposing brilliant fangs perfectly evolved to grab and rip flesh.  Maxwell was frozen.  Everything was happening too quickly and too slowly at once.  She only had time for one thought, _“I am going to die.”_  Then something pushed her to the side, out of its path.  

Jacobi.  

In the split second after the tiger jumped for her and before it landed on her he pushed her out of the way, but it meant that he himself was in the path of the animal.  Maxwell stumbled and fell from surprise and the force of Jacobi’s shove.

_Jacobi!_

She missed the exact moment when the animal made contact with him.  She heard Jacobi scream, the _thud_ of the tiger and man slamming into the dirt.  Simultaneously there was a terrible, wet sound, a meaty _squish_ , and a loud _crack_ and _crunch._ Jacobi’s scream cracked.

Jacobi was on the ground with the tiger on top of him, pinning him under its immense weight.  He was no longer screaming, all of his energy was focused on keeping the tiger from killing him.  Blood dripped down onto his face from his…from his arm.  Oh God, his arm.  She realized the only reason Jacobi was still alive was because he’d employed the same tactic he had back at MIT when his explosive had gone wrong.  He threw his right arm in front of his face.  Now it was a mess of blood and sinew clenched in the tiger’s jaws.  

Before she even properly registered what she was seeing Maxwell was on her feet, running at the animal.  The tiger, torn between making a kill and protecting its meal, only half-turned in her direction. She acted without thinking. As the tiger ripped away a chunk of what was now just meat from Jacobi’s arm, her knife found the tiger’s head. Its face.  Then its throat. 

Again.

Again.

_Again._

As she attacked it, grunting with the effort of burying her knife as deep as possible into its clenched flesh with each strike, Jacobi’s left thumb found the red button on his detonator.   Just before he lost consciousness he jammed down on it.  The final bomb went off.  The mansion behind them disappeared in a burst of flame and a volcano of rubble as several rooms worth of weaponry exploded. They were at least five hundred feet from the mansion, but the force of the blast still flung Maxwell forward, which she had to admit was probably the only reason she was able to get the tiger’s lifeless corpse off of Jacobi.  Both she and Jacobi tumbled forward in a wave of heat and noise.   

The wave passed.  Maxwell was lying over Jacobi’s limp form.  Acrid smoke stung her eyes.  She was deaf but for a ringing in her ears.  The reek of blood and gore assaulted her.  Jacobi was covered in it.  His chest had been raked by the tiger’s claws and gushed blood from under his uniform.  And then there was the mangled remains of his arm.  Maxwell couldn’t even think about it.

For a terrified moment she wasn’t sure if he was breathing.  She checked his pulse.  It was sluggish but it was there.  Jacobi was alive!  But she didn’t know how much longer he would last.  She swallowed hard.  He was bleeding out.  If she couldn’t get a tourniquet on his arm or pressure on his chest he wouldn’t make it to their rescue.

If rescue was coming at all.  

No, she couldn’t think like that.  She couldn’t give up.  Not while they still had a chance.  Jacobi’s breathing was wet and labored, reminding her that as time was passing, so were Jacobi’s chances.  Maxwell hauled him up in a fireman’s carry.  Jacobi was nearly a foot taller than she – six-foot to her five-two – but the adrenaline coursing through her meant she barely noticed it.  His maimed arm hung limply over her side and Maxwell refused to look at it.  She would stop the bleeding as soon as they weren’t in immediate danger of being shot or burned, or both.   

They would both survive, even if she had to hack her way through the entirety of Colombia to ensure it.

“You have to get through this, you idiot,” Maxwell panted.  She knew he couldn’t hear her, but pretending he could helped her resolve.   

It wasn’t difficult to escape into the jungle.  They didn’t have an infinite amount of time before any survivors came after them, but Maxwell had a good head start.  

Once they were far enough that she felt she could risk tending to Jacobi’s injuries, she carefully laid him out.  She was panting, sweating, nearly as soaked in Jacobi’s blood as he was.  He was completely unconscious, clammy, and gray.  But he was still breathing.  Maxwell’s adrenaline was wearing off and her emotions were starting to catch up to her, wearing on her, but she wouldn’t slow down until Jacobi was safe.

She stripped off his uniform’s shirt.  Coupled with a thick stick taken from a nearby tree, she managed to create a makeshift tourniquet and stop the bleeding.  His right arm at the elbow was connected to his body by nothing but a few strips of sinew and a splinter of bone. She had seen worse, but not on Daniel, not on anyone who’d lived to talk about it. 

The wound on his chest came next.  It was more superficial than the wound on his arm.  The animal apparently hadn’t managed to really sink its claws in, not deep enough to expose organ, at least.  It might not even be immediately life threatening.  At least not if she cleaned it as best she could and stopped the bleeding.  Maxwell needed more cloth for bandages and she sacrificed her own shirt.  Shaking fingers unbuttoned her uniform top and she shrugged it off, leaving her in her sports bra.  Realizing her knife was still in the tiger, she tore the cloth into strips with her teeth and hands.  She wrapped his chest, leaning his inert form gracelessly against a tree to do so.  It was awkward and fumbling. Maxwell tied off the bandages as tightly as she could without impeding his breathing.  Breathing hard herself she slung him back over her shoulder.  They had to get a little farther.  Just a little farther.  

Maxwell eventually found a cliff face that provided a degree of cover.  Even better, it wasn’t far from a river. She could just see running water through the trees and the soil was sandy and loose.  Between the cliff and the water there were only two sides of dense jungle from which danger could approach. As carefully as possible, she lowered Jacobi to the ground (although it was less graceful than she would have liked due to her fatigue and their difference in size), raised his feet on a rock, and turned his head in case he threw up.  Then she went about making a fire to keep him warm.  She wouldn’t let herself be afraid, even if she was covered in her best friend’s blood.  Even if he was in shock.  Even if his arm was hanging on by a literal thread.  With shaking reddened hands, she lit a fire with the matches still in Jacobi’s belt pocket.   

It was getting cold and dark.  How many hours ago had they bungled the Teel mission?  Did Kepler know by now?  Did Cutter?  Anticipating Mr. Cutter’s reaction, she shivered, and it had nothing to do with being wet and clammy and partially unclad.  Jacobi groaned and Maxwell nearly let out a cry of relief.  “Daniel?  Daniel, if you can hear me hang on.  I’m calling Kepler.  I’m calling for an extraction.” 

She pulled her emergency communicator from the pack on her belt.  It was one of very few implements remaining; she hadn’t tossed it to the ground when they were stopped.  She tried to steady her breathing as she fumbled for Kepler’s frequency and thumbed the button.  “Macallan, this is Zero-One. Come in Macallan.  Over.”  She still used their code names, just in case.  It was a secure frequency, but Maxwell knew nothing was ever really secure.  She waited. No response, just white noise.  “Macallan, this is Zero-One, _come in_ , over!” she said more loudly.  She paused, but for a shorter interval before continuing, _“_ Nitramide is in critical condition and we need extraction!  I don’t know how much longer he’ll last!  Everything’s gone FUBAR,” Maxwell fumbled over the military slang she never used, “but we’re alive!”  Silence.  

“ _Don’t you dare abandon us now, you two-faced bastard!”_ Maxwell thought, _“Jacobi believes in you.  Jacobi trusts you.  And if he dies because of you, I will kill you myself.”_

“Macallan!  This is Zero-One! We require assistance!” she said again slowly and clearly.  Then without waiting because she couldn’t help herself, “ _Dammit, Macallan_!  The mission is complete and _he needs you_ !” Her voice was hoarse and angry, “Don’t you _dare_ leave us out here! I repeat!   _The mission was successful!_ Nitramide still has a chance if you get your ass down here right now!”

“Zero-One, please, try to calm down,” it was Major Kepler’s scotch-smooth voice.  Maxwell let out a sigh of relief.  “Why didn’t you start with that?  Over.” Maxwell knew he didn’t mean, “why didn’t you start by saying that Jacobi would survive,” even if it was what he wanted her to believe.  He meant, “why didn’t you start by telling me the mission was successful and you might still be valuable enough to risk a few more men to save.”  But at the moment Maxwell didn’t care, too glad for a rescue to be angry about the potential betrayal.  

“I’m sorry, sir, over,” she said.  She wasn’t sorry, but she would say anything to get rescued right now.  

“No worries, Zero-One. We thought we lost you when Raptor’s line went dead _hours_ ago.  Where’ve y’all been hiding?  What happened out there?” His voice was calm and warm; it made Maxwell grit her teeth.  She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but she didn’t trust Kepler any further than she could throw him.  Maxwell knew the Major wasn’t her guardian angel. She may have been the best at her job, but the second-best could always be taught.   

“We’re in the jungle.  It’s only Nitramide and me.  Kissinger was either betrayed, made a fatal error, or defected.  Whatever the case, he and Raptor are dead.  If they weren’t killed by Teel’s men when we heard the gunfire, then they didn’t survive the blast.  Potential leak neutralized.  No GF information can escape through those means.” Read: there was nothing left of those SI agents to torture for information. “Nitramide and I escaped, but we were accosted as we attempted to leave the complex’s grounds.”   

“Didn’t you dismantle their security, Zero-One?  It was your _most important job_ ,” Kepler asked with that old snap in his voice.

“I did, sir. I believe they found us through less technological means. Unless you count animal domestication as tech.”

“Go on.”

“Dogs, sir. Our welcoming committee had several of them. I believe they smelled us out. Teel’s animals…” she paused, looking at Jacobi’s shivering form, “hurt us a few times.”

“Do tell, Zero-One.” 

“Macallan, sir, with all due respect, Nitramide is very badly wounded and—” Maxwell began desperately.   

The Major cut her off, “—and he _cannot_ afford for his partner to waste his valuable time, can he?  By the time you were accosted, the cache was emptied?” 

“No, sir, not then.”

“But they were before you left the compound, I _hope_ ,” Kepler said.  “Since you did say you were _successful_ and leaving valuable Goddard Futuristics technology _exposed_ in the _Amazon Rainforest  does not sound like success!”_ Kepler shouted.

“They were destroyed before we fled, _sir_ ,” Maxwell snapped.  “Nitramide and I emptied his databases and destroyed the weaponry, over.”

“ _Good_.  I expect nothing less from you two, Zero-One,” said Kepler, his tone calming, but still that razor-line, ready to fall back into calm kindness, or rage as explosive as anything Jacobi had ever built.  “And the complex?  I’m sure Nitramide’s explosives did the job, right?” 

“Affirmative.  Nitramide’s charges were already in place in two key locations on the ground floor of the complex and sub-basement by the time things went...bad.  Nitramide had the detonator.  The mansion and the sub-basement have been destroyed.  We saw it go up.  A recon team can confirm this.  Teel has been terminated.  His panic room was flooded with carbon dioxide _and_ blown up.” 

“Excellent, you can continue now.  You were saying you were cut off at the exit.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Not by Teel.”

“Negative, sir, Teel’s men.  Teel was already dead by then.  There were about ten guards, security officers, probably men from the village in the valley.  Some were armed with assault rifles. I am not sure of the makes, but Nitramide can tell you _if_ you manage to get him out of this _alive_ ,” she added that last part to emphasize the importance of haste.  

“I’m sure he will,” said Kepler, unfazed. “Continue.  Did they give you much trouble?”

“Negative, sir.  We got away without much difficulty.  Their last orders were presumably to capture us, not to kill us.  We didn’t have a chance to interview them to be sure,” Maxwell added, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice.  “But they didn’t have a chance to interview _us_ either.  They were neutralized.”  

“And Nitramide’s injury?” asked Kepler.  “If you weren’t caught, how did my agent get hurt, Zero-One?  Do not even try to tell me he did it to himself,” said Kepler with the hint of a laugh. Not a friendly laugh – a threatening one, a rumble of thunder in a clear sky.  “I know Nitramide better than that.” 

“You’re right, sir.  It wasn’t an explosion.  It seems Teel kept an exotic pet.  A tiger.  We were attacked by a white tiger Teel was keeping on the grounds…” she swallowed, “Nitramide was maimed by it. It was neutralized and the base was detonated.  Nitramide and I escaped into the jungle. There has been no sign of pursuers—”

“When?”

“I’m sorry, sir?” 

“When did you get away, Zero-One?  When was the last time you’ve seen a human soul?”

Maxwell checked her Goddard Futuristics watch. It was still perfectly functioning.  It was barely even smudged.  She didn’t think even a nuclear blast would stop it.  It must have been at an hour and a half ago by now.  That would be 1700 but she stretched it for the sake of getting an airlift sooner.  “1500 hours sir. Give or take.  Over.”

“Hmm, I don’t like that give or take, I’m a very exact man—” 

“I wasn’t looking at the time, Macallan!  I was a little busy!” she shouted, then she quickly and bitterly added, “sir.” 

“I would watch my tone, Zero-One, it doesn’t exactly make a man feel like being nice,” said Kepler in that slow voice, smooth as whiskey but far from free of that alcohol burn.  Like the clicks before a lighter ignited, the threat of fire.  A pause.  Maxwell held her breath.  Then the friendly tone returned, “We’ll send a chopper for you two. Make sure your GPS beacon’s working and we’ll be there ASAP.  Sit tight, kids.  Over and out.”

“Thank you, sir!  Wilco!  Over and out!” she placed her communicator in the dirt.  The trees were thin enough here that she hoped the signal could be read through the canopy.  She didn’t want to move Jacobi more than she had to, and she certainly didn’t want to expose them to the open beach.  She leaned back against a tree, let out a shuddering breath, then a half-mad chuckle of relief.  She rubbed her face, probably smearing blood and grime on it, but she didn’t care.    

Jacobi groaned again.  Then, “Maxwell?”  His voice was like sandpaper.  His dark eyes were still closed, his glasses were lost sometime in the fray.  His breathing was hard, as if just speaking tired him even more.

“Don’t try to talk,” Maxwell said, coming to his side.  

“You know I can’t do that,” Jacobi joked.

“I know,” she felt a sad smile cross her face.

“Did I imagine it or did Kepler say he’s coming to get us?”  Jacobi opened his eyes but it took a moment for them to focus on her face.  

“That did just happen.” 

“Huh,” Jacobi rolled his head up to stare at the trees

“He likes you, Jacobi.”

“I like to think so,” Jacobi answered.  “But I’m surprised Cutter’s letting him waste the time.  Even if he likes us, Kepler’s not exactly sentimental.”

“No,” Maxwell said.  “He’s not.  We’re like whiskey, after all.”

“He likes the taste of it.  He likes the smell of it,” Jacobi’s voice was more whisper than anything else.   

“He likes the feel of it in his hand,” Maxwell finished for him, “but he could leave it to die in the Amazon.” 

Jacobi’s pale lips quirked upward.  “Not exactly a raindrops on roses kinda guy.”  A pause, “but Kepler’s _not_ leaving us out here, Alana.  He’s coming for us.”  Jacobi sounded relieved, maybe even touched.  He had far more faith in Kepler’s humanity than she did and the fact that he was sending a helicopter seemed to confirm it for him.  He sighed and coughed, “Well, that’s enough good news.  I don’t know if my vision’s spinning because I lost my glasses or because I’m about to die of a fever.”

Maxwell felt his head.  It was burning up under the slick sweat.  “You have a fever, but you’re not going to die,” Maxwell told him.  She unclipped her canteen from her belt and quickly uncapped it.  She lifted his head carefully. “Here, drink.” She helped him drink. He took a few good gulps, coughing a little.

There was a pause after she lowered his head again.  He didn’t have the strength to do it himself. She closed the canteen and reattached it to her belt.  He closed his eyes and she thought for a moment he’d lost consciousness again when Jacobi’s achingly weak voice asked, “what’d Shere Khan leave me with?”

Maxwell didn’t answer at first.  She didn’t like that question.  She knew he was afraid to look, but the question implied he couldn’t even feel pain in the arm anymore. On top of the entirely understandable fear anyone would have at the prospect of losing their arm, Jacobi had the added fear of losing both his job and his passion.  Jacobi may have survived the attack, but he needed two extremely dextrous hands for his ballistics work.  

“You can’t feel it?” Maxwell asked quietly, nervously.

“What did that SOB leave me with?” Jacobi asked, more hoarsely, more insistently.   

Her stomach and heart sunk.  Suspicions confirmed.  The answer was no. Any delusions Maxwell had harbored about being able to save Jacobi’s arm fell away with her gut.

Maxwell swallowed hard. Deep breath. “I’m not going to lie, Daniel.”

No cocky response.  He opened his eyes, staring skyward, pointedly not looking at his arm.

“I don’t think they'll be able to save your arm,” Maxwell said not looking at him.  

Silence.

“Daniel?”

No response.

She looked over at him in alarm.  She would have been afraid he was dead if it wasn’t for the fact that she could see him breathing and how wet his eyes were as he stared upward. 

“We’ll get through this.” 

“How, Alana?” he demanded,  “I can’t disarm a bomb, make one, or even fire a damn gun with a hook!  I…” his voice cracked, “I’m screwed.”

“Don’t talk like that!  You aren’t!” she snapped, voice like a whip.

“How’s that? How the Hell does my career survive an amputation by tiger?”

He said “my career” but she knew he meant more than that.  He lived for explosions.  Ballistics was his life on and off the field.  It was what he enjoyed most.  It would be like taking away her ability to program. Like cutting out his heart and asking him to keep living.  And even if he could still get his adrenaline high from just watching other people set off explosives, he would still lose his job.  There wasn’t much for Jacobi outside of working for Goddard Futuristics.  Jacobi was dead in the eyes of the rest of the world and he had nothing left from his life before. She knew where Jacobi came from. She knew what he had to go back to. Icy booze and literally nothing else in the world.

That was…if Cutter let him survive at all.  

She didn’t think her heart could sink any deeper, but it did.  She realized that just because they were getting picked up didn’t mean Jacobi would survive.  There was a good chance Cutter and Kepler would kill him before he got out of the ER, getting rid of a liability.  If he couldn’t do his job, Goddard Futuristics wasn’t going to keep him around. And they certainly weren’t going to send him off with disability and a pension.  They would kill him.  Delete him like a bad line of code.  Cut him out like Nikolai Yezhov.  Gone, like he never existed at all.  

Jacobi must have made the connection too in the silence that followed.  He looked terrified.  His thin eyes were huge and desolate.  His breathing was short.  She had never seen him look so hopeless, so lost.  It was crushing.  “How do _I_ survive it?” he whispered.  

“Me,” said Maxwell, voicing the idea that had been brewing in the back of her mind since she got the tourniquet on Jacobi’s arm.  

“You?  Please, Maxwell, I know you’re very persuasive, but do you really think Cutter is going to listen to you if you ask him _weally_ nicewy to keep me awou—”

“Shut up!” She could only stand so much of his mocking baby talk. “Jacobi, are you forgetting that I am a world renowned robotics expert?”

“…No?”

“You’ve seen _The Six Million Dollar Man!_ Make the connection!  I am going to build you an amazing cyborg arm!” 

Jacobi turned his head to stare at her.  His unfocused eyes found her face.  His look of fear softened.  A small smirk raised the corner of Jacobi's worn lips. “Make sure it’s cool.”  

“I’ll try my best.”

 

***

 

It was a rough night.

Maxwell was afraid to move Jacobi to a more open area despite the fact she knew the beacon would be clearer without the canopy. Even with the fire to keep him warm, Jacobi shivered in the gloom. She kept him hydrated.  She tried to keep him warm.  He groaned in his sleep, his breathing was sometimes ragged.  More than once Maxwell was afraid she lost him to the fever his body was desperately fighting, but every time he pulled through.   

When he slept quietly she worked on designs for the task she had given herself: create a perfect robotic arm.  An arm that could feel, function, and respond exactly like a human one.  Something would need to be sacrificed to maximize what Jacobi needed.  He needed to feel and he needed to be able to precisely control it with his thoughts.  His ability to manipulate the limb had to be complete and his movements had to exactly mimic his natural ones. Appearances would take a backseat to function, at least for now. She was always more interested in hardware’s abilities rather than the color or sleekness of the casing it was wrapped in. Jacobi admired aesthetics more than she did, but he, too, favored function over form.  The explosive could look hideous, the blast needed to be beautiful.  It had to do what it was designed to do.   With a stick she sketched in the dirt, glancing over at Jacobi to make sure nothing had changed.  Equations for movement, amounts of material, the materials themselves, sketches of various parts.  Mistakes were cursed at and kicked away with her scuffed boot.  The plans were crude, but exact.  Almost perfect blueprints. The only question was whether it would work.  Regardless, she would make it work.

He wouldn’t die now. She wouldn’t let him. They’d been through too much for him to die now.  She had never really had a friend before and those few she did have were nothing like her relationship with Jacobi. What she knew of friendships in general told her no one else’s was quite like theirs.  No one’s was so close.  So trusting.  So complete.  

They got along from the day they met.  Well, almost.

She remembered her first day at Goddard Futuristics.  Kepler had given her a brief tour and introduced her to a handful of coworkers.  The human ones Maxwell expressed very little interest in.  The AIs she took to almost immediately.  She had no intentions of making friends with the human beings, she never did.  

Kepler hadn’t intentionally introduced her to Jacobi but Jacobi had been stalking Kepler.  He needed the Major to approve some project and was impatient for him to do so.  By then Jacobi was an SI Old Hand.  Everyone knew Mr. Jacobi even if he had a very mixed reputation amongst the staff.

Jacobi had been constantly checking his watch in annoyance and leaning against the wall.  He detached himself and came up to Kepler’s side without waiting for Kepler to finish with Maxwell.   Jacobi barely waited for a pause in conversation, jumping in when Kepler took a breath, “Major?  I need you to sign this.”

“And this impatient little so-and-so is Daniel Jacobi,” said Kepler as he took the clipboard out of Jacobi’s hands.  He glanced over the first page, flipped through the rest, frowned at the last page, nodded, then very pointedly added his signature to the bottom.  He passed it back to Jacobi.  Then, just as Jacobi turned to leave, Kepler said, “Mr. Jacobi, this is Dr. Alana Maxwell, AI specialist.”

Jacobi turned back with a sigh of annoyance.  He was tall and on the thinner side of average.  He had olive skin, short black hair, and his heavily-lidded eyes were nearly as dark.  He had thick expressive eyebrows that added a certain weight to his judgmental looks.  He had a heart-shaped face and wore horn-rimmed glasses. His fingers were rough with calluses – she found out later that was from years of twisting and untwisting wires between them.  

“Charmed,” said Jacobi dryly.  Maxwell didn’t say anything, just nodded minutely.  He took Maxwell’s hand when she offered it, but it was perfunctory for both of them.  They barely showed up on one another’s radar.

Neither of them thought much about each other then.  They weren’t social people.  They were both in Section 5, but different departments thereof.  They worked in the same building, but didn’t see each other every day.  Maxwell was in her lab, Jacobi was in his.  It wasn’t until Jacobi had car trouble one evening about a week or so into Maxwell’s time at GF that they hit it off.  Maxwell and Jacobi were the last two in the parking lot.  Jacobi was bent over his engine cursing profusely and creatively at the car.  Maxwell stopped and helped him.  Between the two of them, they managed to get it running again.  Actual arguments turned into joke arguments turned into banter turned into friendly conversation.  As a thank you, Jacobi took her out for dinner at a cheap Chinese place not far away in Cape Canaveral proper.  They were friends from that point onward.  Inseparable.   

Maxwell and Jacobi could not have come from more different backgrounds and yet they were so alike.  Maxwell was one of a half dozen children, Jacobi was an only child.  Maxwell grew up in the middle of nowhere, in a gray, dying mining town, and while Jacobi moved a lot as a child, he was born and spent a lot of time in big cities.  Maxwell’s family was generically white going back what seemed like eons; always, always living and dying in the same tiny little town Maxwell was born in.  Jacobi’s roots were Korean and Jewish, both his parents were from the East Coast, but neither stayed there.  Maxwell was raised strictly Pentecostal, Jacobi, Jewish.  Maxwell never left Montana before her eventual escape, and Jacobi, because of his father’s job, had seen huge swaths of the country by the time he left home.

But for all their differences in upbringing, they were very much the same.  They both hated their families and hadn’t looked back since leaving for college.  They were both bullied and teased as children.  They always knew they were different, and had turned what once was their biggest weakness into their greatest strengths.  Despite being raised with religion (although Jacobi’s family was far less religious than Maxwell’s) they were both staunch atheists now.  Each was driven and ambitious.  Each pushed things further than most people thought was safe.  Each loved to live on the edge, testing the limits.  They’d each sold their souls willingly.  

And each had the other.  

They were more than friends but remained on the platonic axis. She hated when people used “More Than Friends” to describe romantic relationships. There was no way anyone’s lover, fiancé, or spouse was any closer to them, mattered any more to them, than Jacobi was and did to Maxwell.  

Lovers cheated. They lied. They grew spiteful and cold.  They hid it all behind a translucent veil of superiority.  Maxwell and Jacobi never did.  Jacobi and she were friends and were closer than any lovers she had ever met. Romance was not more than friendship. Sex was not more than friendship. And anyone who thought lovers were More Than Friends had never had a real friend.

Maxwell’s parents were supposedly More Than Friends, but they weren’t even friends. They hated each other.  They hated each other and hated their children because of it. It was all just biology for them even if they wouldn’t admit it.  Their dedication to their family’s needs was strictly driven by obligation to their genes: you keep your children safe because they carried your DNA.  Aside from that, Maxwell and her siblings didn’t matter and she knew it.  

Life for them was biological functions.  Eat. Breathe. Fuck.  Die. That was it. Her father dressed it up in a religious bow, high-mindedly calling it God’s Will rather than evolution’s flood of hormones and electrical signals.  Hiding from humanity’s animal side  by demanding they all honor the arbitrary rules set down by men from a time before people lived past forty.  It was almost funny if it wasn’t so pathetic, if he hadn’t hurt Maxwell so deeply with it.  

 “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” (Hebrews 13:4), “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife” (Genesis 2:24).  “I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?” (Jeremiah 13:27).  She still remembered all the passages she and her siblings were made to recite over and over and over again as punishments. Those had been for her older brother who had gotten a girl pregnant in his junior year of high school.

She had different ones.  She spent hours facing the wall in their tiny kitchen repeating her passages.  “He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:16), “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” (Ephesians 6:1). “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed, then Eve.  And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.  Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety” (1 Timothy 2:11-15).

She was forced to repeat those words to herself until her father was satisfied that she had learned her lesson. Over and over and over again.  Over and over and over again.  Just thinking about it made her fists and teeth clench, sent that rage and fear coursing back through her.  Refusing to do it got you much worse.  It was safer to swallow your pride and do as you were told.  At least then you wouldn’t go hungry.  You wouldn’t get hurt.  They wouldn’t yell for hours.  He wouldn’t mention you in his next sermon.  

Saved in childbearing.   _Ha._ All women wanted to be mothers and housewives, didn’t they?  Anyone else was going to hell. No woman in her family ever dreamed of anything more.  Anything more than nice clothes and a new kitchen and a handsome husband.  Maxwell dressed sloppily at best; she had bigger concerns than her appearance.  She couldn’t cook and didn’t want to learn.  And she never had any interest in boys.  

That in itself was unacceptable, but she had heard of it happening.  She knew that.  She remembered when Katherine Smith told her parents she was a lesbian.  Katherine was thrown out of the congregation and Maxwell’s father recommended that her parents send her to a “conversion” camp until she stopped being aroused by other girls. Zap the gay away. Electrical currents to rewrite bioelectrical pathways.  Short circuit the brain.  Even the most religious knew deep down that sex wasn’t about God at all.  That it was all animal instinct and biological programming.  It was funny how they tried to mask their base instincts.  How they tried to hide it with words like “marriage” and “adulatory,” categories _they_ constructed.  How her father could pass judgment on her brother while he himself was praised for the size of his family.  In the end they had both done the same thing: they’d passed on their genetic material.  

But Maxwell wasn’t interested in girls either.  Her biology did not function at all.  She knew her parents were wrong, but in everything she’d read and seen from the world outside that little mining town, everyone was interested in _someone_ .  Humans were inexact, inelegant machines.  They malfunctioned constantly.  They acted irrationally, even detrimentally.  She wasn’t any different.  Maxwell wasn’t interested in anyone _that_ way.  Thoughts of sex never crossed her mind and when they did it was with aloof disgust at best.  Everyone liked someone in high school, everyone but Maxwell.  Everyone was having sex or talking about having sex. The very idea terrified and repulsed her.

She pretended otherwise, but Maxwell was always secretly afraid something was wrong with her. Biologically speaking, sex and childbirth were vital. Perhaps the most vital of functions to be performed by any living entity. Pass on your genes. Propagate the species. “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Why didn’t she want it?  Why did she cover her eyes when a classmate pulled out some porn they’d found?  Why did she think Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet smashing their sweaty bodies together in an old fashioned car was boring at best?  It was something that haunted her for years…well, until she met Jacobi.

Jacobi was like her. No girlfriend. No boyfriend. No interest. It was something they talked about once because of a rumor.  It had been said that Maxwell and Jacobi were More Than just Friends and it was spreading around the SI ranks like the Plague.  The idea frightened Maxwell. Jacobi and she hadn’t known each other that long at that point. They were teamed up for a few missions as Major Kepler’s pet agents, and they got along.  They were friends.  It felt like they’d known each other for years. Joking, teasing, talking, playing video games, eating at crappy burger joints until they got thrown out for blowing up stubborn ketchup bottles or hacking jukeboxes.

She liked Jacobi very much. More than she thought she ever liked anyone. And it _terrified_ her that Jacobi might be thinking of her differently. That he might have been judging her based on how much he wanted to fuck her. That there was some violent animal element to it. Something ugly and biological. Something instinctual.  Something base. That he didn’t like _her,_ but her genetics. She started avoiding him. It didn’t work for long.

“Wanna hit the Blue Moon Diner after our shift?  They’ve got great onion rings and I only got tossed out of there once,” Jacobi said, leaning against the wall next to her locker.  

“What do you think of me?” She demanded, slamming her locker closed.

“Uh...is this some kind of test?” He asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” she said firmly, but in a rush.

“Good…?” Jacobi answered, still looking at her in confusion. “What’s going on here exactly?”

She stared at him. “Are we friends?” She asked.

“…Yes?” he said. “Can you tell me what this game is?  It’s not fair if you’re the only one who knows the rules.”

“Someone said that men and women can’t be friends.”

“I think that’s from _When Harry Met Sally._ It’s a terrible movie. I’ve never seen it, but it’s terrible.  What the Hell brought all this up?”

“McClellan asked if we were dating. She said everyone’s talking about it.”

“I swear to God this place is worse than high school,” Jacobi sighed and rubbed his eyes under his glasses.  He adopted a high mocking voice and continued, “‘ _Ooh!_ I bet Jacobi’s got a crush on the new girl because I saw them talking one time!  He’s never had a girlfriend, I bet he wants to get laid!’”

“Oh my God!” Maxwell laughed, “you’re right!  It _is_ just like high school!” Only with more highly trained paramilitary agents and evil corporations.    

They went to the Blue Moon Diner in Jacobi’s Volvo, an old rust bucket that could really only be described as impressively shitty, but he kept it working and Maxwell knew he took pride in that.  He wouldn’t hear anything said about it, so she said everything about it.  They argued over how high to put the A/C.  She put her feet up on the dashboard. He let her pick the music.  She settled on the 1812 Overture when she could find nothing else that piqued her interest.

“I love this song!” Jacobi said.

“Really?  I never pegged you as a classical guy.  I hear you listening to heavy metal at your workstation.”  

“I’m not really a music guy, but, yeah, I like loud and I like chaos,” he shrugged, “so...metal. You usually listen to that crappy Techno stuff…EDM or whatever… I hear it in your lab.”

“It’s not crappy—”

“Yes, it is,” Jacobi cut in.

 _“I_ like repetition and order, so...electronica.”  She watched Jacobi as he flicked his blinker on in time with the music.  “What is it about this song that you like?”

“Cannons,” he grinned.

“Of course.” She laughed a little under her breath. A quiet fell over her.  She watched Jacobi as he hummed the main theme under his breath.  She had been replaying part of their earlier conversation in her head.  It kept coming back to her since he said it.  Finally, she asked the question that had been in the back of her mind, “You’ve never had a girlfriend?”

“No.  Why?” He asked.

“Well, you’re older than me. Way older.”

“Six years is not ‘way older,’” he corrected her.

“Whatever, you’re still older than me.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “So?”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” She tried.

“Nope. Not one of those either,” he said without much interest as he pulled into the parking lot.  “Oh no you don’t,” he said to a BMW that was lurking around the same spot Jacobi had his eye on.  He drove perhaps faster than most people would find acceptable to grab the spot. 

“Why?”  Maxwell asked.  He smirked as he watched the BMW drive on in the rearview mirror.

“Why what?” Jacobi asked glancing over at her.  

“Why haven’t you had a girlfriend or boyfriend?”

He let out an audible breath and sat back, letting his head hit the rest.  He hadn’t turned off the engine but he jabbed off the radio when the DJ came back on.  “Is this about us?  Because I meant what I said.”  

“It’s not about us,” Maxwell answered.  “Not really. It’s…I’ve never had one either.”

“That’s great,” said Jacobi noncommittally.

“I’ve never wanted one.”  Maxwell added.  She looked sidelong at Jacobi when she continued, “What about you?” 

“Same. Never had the interest,” Jacobi removed his keys, killing the engine.

“In anyone?”

“Yeah, in anyone.” He went to open the door.  

“Have you ever fucked?”

The question made him stop.  He leaned over the steering wheel.  He laughed humorlessly under his breath and shook his head.  He muttered, “Still with the high school bull crap.” But it seemed to have hit him on a deeper level, a chink in his carefully cultivated sarcasm armor.  Then, louder, he said, “Honestly?  No.  No, I haven’t.  Never wanted to.  Never really saw the point.  Pissed my dad off real bad when I wasn’t out sexually assaulting girls like the other Red Blooded American boys. You?” He glanced in her direction.  She was staring wordlessly at him.  She was surprised.  She hadn’t ever known there was anyone like her in the world, a virgin over twenty who wasn’t desperately trying to lose their virginity.  Someone who wasn’t constantly thinking about sex.  After all the other things they had in common, Maxwell did not expect them to share _this_.   

She let out a laugh of relief.  Jacobi’s expression soured and he bristled.  His hands gripped the wheel tightly, white knuckled.  She clapped her hand over her mouth, “Jacobi, don’t be like that!”

“Like _what_ , Maxwell?  Okay, no, sorry, go right ahead!  Taunt me about being a virgin,”  He spat.  Jacobi tried to hide his psychological scars, but sometimes the armor broke and fell away and his long wounded soul showed through.  

“No!  It’s not that at all!”  Maxwell rushed on, trying to make him understand, “I am, too!  I’ve never been interested either!…And I’ve just…I’ve never met somebody else like me!”

Then Jacobi smiled.  Not his usual half smirk, but a real, full smile. “Me neither.”  A pause in which they both looked at each other.  Then the moment passed and Jacobi jerked his head toward the neon sign of the diner. “So, burgers?”

It never came up again, but Maxwell could see the relief in Jacobi’s face.  He wasn’t alone.  She wasn’t alone.  Neither of them would ever be again, not for any reason.  They spent so much of their lives alone, locked in themselves, they had almost convinced themselves they liked it.  But no one really wanted to be alone.  No one actually liked isolation, not even them.  They didn’t need anyone else, just that one person to reach out to, one other person to remind each other they weren’t broken, they weren’t wrong. 

Eighteen months had passed since she joined Goddard Futuristics.  Eighteen months and dozens of missions both together and separately. Maxwell was shocked how quickly she and Jacobi connected.  Not even two years and she felt as if she knew him her whole life.  

A lot had changed in eighteen months.  She got a restraining order against her family, shortly before she “died” tragically.  She didn’t tell Jacobi.  He was willing to talk about his asshole father and Maxwell would listen, but she kept that part of her life private, even from Jacobi. It had nothing to do with keeping it a secret from him or anyone else. It was that _that_ Hellish part of her life was over.  She was never looking back.  She would never again look out at that desolate mining town as cold and barren as the surface of Mars.  She would never again watch the living rot away, dead before their time. Never again be punished for her mind and her opinions.  Never again be cursed and spat on by the people who supposedly loved her.  Never again have to pretend to love the people she had nothing but spite for.  Never again would she need to hold back.  Never again would she be told she was too radical.  Her life was _hers_ now.  Jacobi was part of her present life not the old one.

Jacobi was a huge part of that present life.  More of a presence in it than anyone else, barring her AIs.  Jacobi was there the first time she killed someone. He was the first person one of her computers spoke to who wasn’t in her department.  He was her partner on her first field mission.  He had killed for her long before today. And she had done the same for him.  And she _damn sure_ wasn’t going to let him die now.  She wouldn’t let Kepler wash his hands of him.  She wouldn’t let Cutter kill him for the secrets he knew now that Goddard Futuristics couldn’t use him.  

“Maxwell?”  Jacobi’s voice croaked. It was around 2300 and she was sitting by the fire staring into it.  She was trying to think of the best way to connect nerve endings to wiring.  It was all electricity, it should be easy to complete the circuit.  It was the place where biology met technology, and the biology made Maxwell struggle.

“Do you need anything?” she asked, startled by his voice.  Jacobi hadn’t moved much since she laid him down.  Half his body was illuminated brightly, the other half was in near-total darkness.  The fire cast a distorted shadow against the rock face to his left.  She had the mangled arm facing her, she was afraid that if she kept it in the dark she would miss if something happened, if bugs came for it, if an infection set in, if he started bleeding again.  The limb had gone completely a dull purplish-gray.  The veins were dark.  The flesh was bloodless.  Useless.  Dead tissue.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Like what?”

“You’re being too nice,” he said.  “Doesn’t sound like you.”  

“I’ll watch it,” Maxwell promised.

“Any word from Kepler?”

“No,” said Maxwell bitterly.  “None.”

A long pause.  “He’s not gonna leave us out here.” Jacobi sounded as if he was trying to reassure himself as much as Maxwell.  

And Maxwell had no response.  If Kepler didn’t find them soon, Jacobi wouldn’t survive until morning.  She would never forgive Kepler for that.  

Inspiration struck her a few minutes later and she scrawled in the dirt.  She needed to get back to her lab.  But there would be no point to the arm at all if Jacobi didn’t survive to use it.  She used her phone to take a picture of the scribbles.  Even if Kepler had given up on Jacobi, Maxwell hadn’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ace Maxwell and Jacobi are very important to me.
> 
> Also I considered leaving out physical appearances in the style of the podcast, but I have my head canons and I can't draw so I described them. I hope that doesn't detract from the story.


	3. OFP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OFP  
> Adjective. Military slang. Abbreviation. "Own Fucking Program."  
> Used to describe a soldier who does what she wants.

The helicopter finally found them at 0300.  Maxwell had been starting to fall asleep against a tree. She spent the last hour pinching herself awake but her exhaustion was overpowering her.  When she first heard the sound of the helicopter’s blades she thought she was dreaming.  Then the communicator beside her in the dirt buzzed to life.  “Zero-One, Nitramide, this is Macallan. Do you read me?   We believe we have found your location, over.”  

Maxwell was jarred completely awake.  Suddenly she had never been less tired in her life.  She grabbed the communicator, “Yes!  Yes, Maj—Macallan, I read you loud and clear!  Over!”

“We see a fire by a cliff and a stream. Is that you kids?  Over.”

“Yes, sir!  Yes, that’s us!  Over.” Maxwell said.

“Finally, good!  Do you know how many poachers and loggers we scared shitless looking for you two?” But he didn’t wait for her to answer, nor would she have provided one.  “How’s Nitramide?  Over.”

“Alive, but barely.”  

“Tell him to hang on.  Can you see us, Zero-One?”  

And looking up she saw the helicopter’s sleek shape over the trees, black on black, invisible but for the fact that it blotted out the stars. “Yes!  I see you!” she responded.

A pair of shapes emerged. A human figure and stretcher were lowered down, carefully breaking through the canopy.  It wasn’t Kepler, it wasn’t tall or broad enough, but a medic, Maxwell recognized the uniform.  Upon reaching the ground, the medic simply declined her head towards Maxwell in a very terse nod before strapping Jacobi’s limp form into the stretcher.  

“He’s secure. You can pull him up, over and out,” the medic said into the microphone strapped to the shoulder of her uniform.  Jacobi glanced exhaustedly at Maxwell. She caught his eye and gave him what she hoped was a calm smile.  As Jacobi was pulled into the helicopter, Maxwell was helped aboard by another medic.  

Major Warren Kepler himself was waiting on the helicopter.  Kepler helped secure Jacobi’s stretcher.  He patted him on his left shoulder and muttered something into his ear that Maxwell couldn’t hear over the roar of the helicopter blades.  Jacobi gave the Major a weak but appreciative smile. The second medic handed Maxwell a headset so she could hear the others talking over the roar of the helicopter’s blades.  Then he strapped an oxygen mask over Jacobi’s face as the first medic tended to his wounds.  Maxwell didn’t take her eyes off Jacobi.  “Doctor,” Kepler said, handing her a shiny shock blanket as he sat next to her.  “You look cold.”  

She didn’t say anything but took the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders.

“We’ve got a quick flight up to our craft. We’ll be at Goddard Futuristics’ best medical facility before sunup.  Do you want to tell me more about what happened?”

“Honestly Major?” said Maxwell not looking away from Jacobi’s inert form.  The medics were working furiously on stabilizing him, hooking him up to blood bags, replacing her makeshift bandages with real ones, sewing closed his chest wounds.  “No.  I don’t.”  

Kepler didn’t move.  “Allow me to rephrase, Maxwell: tell me what happened or Mr. Jacobi won’t be the only one in need of medical attention.”  

“Are you threatening me, Major?” Maxwell asked coldly, looking over at him.

Kepler didn’t even seem to breathe, “I absolutely am, doctor.  You and Jacobi—”

“Are like whiskey?” snapped Maxwell.

“Not what I was going to say,” Kepler said, “but I’m glad you remember.  I was going to say, you and Jacobi don’t have much of a choice in this matter.  Goddard Futuristics needs to know what happened at Teel’s place and they’ll get the information one way or another.  So either you can tell me or you can tell Mr. Cutter.”

Maxwell’s face twisted.  Kepler was infinitely preferable to Cutter.  That tiger was preferable to Cutter.  “What do you want to know?”

“I thought so,” said Kepler.  “Now, we’ve got a trek ahead of us.  A regular passenger jet going from Colombia to Florida takes about three hours.  An F-15 does it in 74 minutes.  GF’s Condor can make it 22.  Jacobi’ll be infinitely better off if we can do it in the last.  So whenever you feel like talking…”

Maxwell’s expression became colder, more disgusted, but she was still watching Jacobi’s chest slowly rise and fall.  She wouldn’t test Kepler for something as petty as pride.  Not _now_ , when Daniel’s life was on the line.  Not when they were so close to getting through the night.  “You’ve already made your point, Major,” Maxwell told him.  “I’m following your rules tonight.”  

“Outstanding.”

The chopper rose up. Maxwell could not see where they were going, but she knew what was happening.  The helicopter was entering the maw of a Goddard Futuristics Condor, one of the company’s faster earthbound vessels.  It was something like a space shuttle, something like a jet, and something all its own.  The Condor was large enough to hold a small craft inside its cargo hold, fast enough that at high altitudes it could circle the world in five hours, capable of surviving in the Mesosphere, and contained some of the best stealth tech in existence.  It was one of the shining stars of Goddard’s fleet and a secret to anyone outside the ranks of the Strategic Intelligence Division.  As an SI agent Maxwell had been in these before, dozens of times.  She was no longer impressed.  

They docked smoothly inside the Condor.  The chopper pilot killed the engine, exited, and opened the side door.  Kepler stepped out.  He turned back to face Maxwell, holding his headset in his hands.  “Do you want something, Dr. Maxwell?  Tea?  Coffee?” Maxwell watched as Jacobi was taken from the smaller craft.  “We’ve got a little time before this bird lands and you did promise me a story,” Kepler reminded her.  

“A new uniform shirt,” said Maxwell listlessly, “and some tea.”  

Five minutes later Maxwell sat in the cabin wearing a slightly oversized shirt and clutching a cup of bitter lemon tea.  Kepler emerged from the hold and sat across from her.  He was armed with a notebook computer, ready to take notes for the official report.   “Alright,” he muttered, “just give me a second to get this thing ready.  There we go,” he turned to face Maxwell, “let’s get started.” She hated him for his calm.

Warren Kepler was an extremely tall man and his stiff posture made him seem even taller.  He towered over Jacobi though Maxwell thought that was due, in part, to Jacobi’s unfortunate habit of standing behind Kepler, unintentionally or perhaps unconsciously making himself seem smaller than he really was, as well as subordinate.  But even standing side-by-side, Kepler was noticeably taller than Jacobi.  He carried himself in such a way that made him seem as tall as a building and as stern as a marble statue. His skin was tanned from years in the field.  His dirty blond hair was graying a little prematurely at the temples.  His eyes were fierce and blue.  They had a way of shining dangerously when he was both pleased and angry.  His jaw was square, strong.  His expression was always friendly and open, until it wasn’t, until his calm smile disappeared like lightning cracking across the sky.  He was equally and impressively handsome and imposing.  

“How’s Jacobi?” she asked nervously.

“He should make it to the hospital _if_ we can get there quickly,” Kepler told her flatly.  “Ready for our interview?”

“Of course,” Maxwell said, directing her glare into her cup.  How dare he?  “Where do I start?”

“Landing.”

Maxwell told him everything that happened, every relevant detail, and answered his every question promptly.  

“Well,” said Kepler when she was finished.  “It sounds to me like you owe Mr. Jacobi a lot.  You probably wouldn’t be sitting here if it hadn’t been for him.”

“I know that, Major,” Maxwell assured him.

“Do you?”  Kepler asked.  “Because I don’t think arguing with me before was showing much concern for Mr. Jacobi’s wellbeing.  I may not have a genius IQ but if I were you I would have done everything I could to cooperate with my rescuers.” His tone sank dangerously, the ominous low-tide before a tsunami.  

“I—!” Maxwell glared at him, ready to yell, ready to pound the table, ready to throw her tea in his face, but she held back.  “I’m sorry, Major,” she said through her teeth.  She clutched her paper teacup so tightly her nails left indents in it.

“I’m not your enemy, Maxwell,” Kepler said, the calm returning without the tidal wave crashing over her.  

“Of course, sir,” Maxwell said, but she did not believe him.  

 

***

 

When they arrived at the Goddard Futuristics medical lab in Cape Canaveral, Maxwell was checked into her own hospital room.  She was not allowed to observe or take part in Jacobi’s surgery.  She was almost positive they sedated her to keep her away.  The more they fought her on seeing him the more sure she became that Jacobi had been discretely executed on Cutter’s orders.  They tried to convince her of the contrary, but of course they would.  They wanted her to believe they were doing their best.  If he died, she would be told he didn’t make it through surgery.  Kepler might even try to make it her fault.  Despite the sedative she believed they’d snuck into her food, she slept fitfully.  She only had a few bumps, bruises, and burns, so after getting cleaned up, hydrated, fed, and being made to sleep, she was checked out.

As soon as she was given the okay, she rushed to the front desk.  “Daniel Jacobi,” she said without even greeting the receptionist.  “Where is he?”

“Jacobi…Jacobi…” the nurse ran her finger down the computer screen in a way that would have made Maxwell twitch if she wasn’t already agitated by her anxiety for Jacobi.  Every moment the receptionist took looking for his name wore endlessly on Maxwell’s fraying nerves. “Here he is.”

Maxwell let out sigh of relief, the tense fear rushed out of her like air from a balloon.  He was _alive_.  They hadn’t killed him.  At least not yet.  “Where?!” she snapped when the receptionist didn’t immediately answer.

“You’ll need clearance.  Let me see your ID and please provide a voice sample into,” the receptionist put a microphone on the countertop, awkwardly scooting it towards Maxwell, “this microphone.”

Maxwell growled in annoyance but she provided her Goddard Futuristics identification card, passing it to the receptionist and leaned into the microphone, “Alana Maxwell.”

“Voice recognition confirmed,” said the computer in its electronic voice.   

“Sorry about that, Ms. Maxwell—”

“ _Doctor_ Maxwell.  Where. Is. Daniel Jacobi?” Maxwell said dangerously slowly.

“302.”

Maxwell took off running.  She could hardly believe he was alive.  She was still afraid she might find nothing but an empty bed.  She was so sure Cutter and Kepler had pulled the plug.  It would have been so easy to fake a mistake during surgery.  Cut an artery, let him bleed out.  Overdose of anesthesia, he never wakes up.  Air in his veins, the embolism kills him.

When Maxwell reached the room in question she didn’t even bother knocking.  

Jacobi was there!  

He was alive!   

Jacobi was unconscious; he must have only recently returned from surgery.  He had more color in his face than when she last saw him.  The grime and blood had been washed away.  She couldn’t see much more than his face and neck because the other occupants of the room were blocking her view.  She stopped short at the doorway.  There was a small dark-haired doctor and the unmistakable form of Warren Kepler.  They turned to face her when she arrived.  Kepler stood straight backed and broad shouldered, hair immaculate, holding his cap in hand.  The doctor looked surprised at her entrance. Kepler did not.  They had been speaking in hushed voices, but the doctor fell silent at Maxwell’s arrival.  

When they turned Maxwell got a better view of Jacobi.  She could see the length of his arm and where it ended above joint and a long railroad of brackish stitches.  The skin was reddened but it was shockingly sterile compared to the mangled remains she had seen, but somehow this was so much worse.  The doctor had peeled back the hospital gown so the sleeve did not obscure the site as she spoke to the Major about it.  Maxwell could see the burn scar on his side, unblocked by his arm.  It stung her oddly.  Seeing the burn like that made Jacobi’s missing arm seem even heavier, even more real.   _“This isn’t the way it is supposed to be.  This isn’t the way he is supposed to look.”_ It was a stupid thought, an obvious thought, and Maxwell shook her head to rid herself of it.  

“Major!” Maxwell said, storming into the room.  

“Dr. Maxwell, good morning.  Glad you’re up.  I was told you were doing well so I thought I would check in on Mr. Jacobi,” he nodded toward the form on the bed. “He can’t really talk at the moment, I’m afraid.  Give him a bit for the anesthesia to wear off.  How’re you feeling?”  Scotch smooth.

“I’m…I'm fine, sir,” she answered.  

“Are you sure you want to be here?  It’ll be pretty grizzly.”

“It’s already grizzly,” Maxwell assured him.  “It’s been grizzly for hours.”  Nothing would ever be worse than hearing the bone crack and Jacobi shriek. Kepler knew Maxwell had been there when it happened, knew she had strapped on the makeshift tourniquet, knew she had been taking care of his wound all night.  Kepler had an ulterior motive and Maxwell knew why he wanted her out. He was assessing Jacobi’s chances, how well he might recover, gathering information to relay to Cutter so Cutter could decide if Jacobi was worth keeping alive.

“Alright, if you’re sure,” Kepler shrugged, “Doctor, you were saying?”

The woman was bandaging the remains of Jacobi’s arm in soft white bandages, “The present state of robotics cannot perfectly replicate a human hand. We can restore some movement and some feeling, but there aren’t prostheses advanced enough to allow for the sensitivity required in Mr. Jacobi’s line of work.”  She lowered Jacobi’s gown.  

“That’s a shame,” Kepler almost sounded like he meant it as he looked down at the prone form of his most loyal agent. It sent a wave of disgust through Maxwell. She knew full well what he would tell Mr. Cutter and what Cutter’s response would be.  Kepler could get rid of Jacobi and things for him “would be...well, they’d be more or less fine.”  And Cutter would terminate the employee with extreme prejudice.  Tomorrow Maxwell would find her friend’s bed empty and be told he suddenly flatlined in the middle of the night. No one could save him, they would say.  And after that day no one would even mention the name Daniel Jacobi again.

Maxwell would not let that happen.

“Bullshit!” Maxwell shouted, storming across the room to Jacobi’s bed.

“An objection, Dr. Maxwell?” asked Kepler. Both he and the doctor looked at her and away from where Jacobi lay too peacefully.

“Yes, an objection!” Maxwell snapped.  “I say it’s bullshit that we can’t create a perfect replica of the human arm!  The problem isn’t hardware!  It’s that your robotics ‘experts,’” the word dripped with sarcasm, “aren’t smart enough to have figured out how to do it!”

“Excuse me,” the doctor protested and Maxwell stopped her, raising her hand.

“You’re excused,” she said without looking away from Kepler.  “I could make Jacobi an arm that lets him get back to work.  I’ve already got schematics.”

“Schematics?  It’s been less than twenty-four hours since Jacobi was injured and you already have schematics for the most advanced prosthesis ever?”

“Who are you talking to, Major?” Maxwell said angrily.  She pulled her smartphone from her pocket and opened the images, thrusting the phone up into Kepler’s face.  

Kepler tucked his cap under his arm and took the phone from her.  He fingered through the photos with a frown.  “Scratches in the sand,” he muttered.  

“I didn’t exactly have anything else to write with at the time! It _will_ work!” she snapped, “you just need to give me time!”

“Time before what?” Kepler asked with mock innocence.  

“You know full well what,” Maxwell hissed. 

“Well then…” said Kepler glancing up from the phone, a hidden meaning locked behind his eyes just out of Maxwell’s reach.  “I recommend you give me more than just sketches in the sand, Maxwell.”  The doctor had been looking from one of them to the other as if she was watching a tennis match.  Kepler nodded to her, “keep up the good work, Dr. Wong.  Keep me updated.”  He put on his cap.  “Have a good day, both of you.”  He turned and left.

Maxwell glanced back at Jacobi and bit her lip.  Then without saying another word to the doctor she stormed after Kepler into the hall.  She felt like a kettle boiling over.  Nothing would stop her now. “Major!”

He stopped, becoming, if possible, even stiffer. Then he turned on his heel to face her.  “Dr. Maxwell, I cannot imagine there’s anything more you have to say to me after your little display in Jacobi’s room.”

“There’s _a lot_ more I have to say to you!” Maxwell hissed.  “Why did our extraction take so long?”

“Your GPS signal was difficult to pick up under the canopy.  We had to comb the Amazon Rainforest for you two,” said Kepler incredulously, as if she was being foolish.  “You know even Goddard Futuristics has limitations.”

“I don’t think that was the problem,” Maxwell said accusingly, “I think you were trying to decide if we were worth picking up at all.”  

Kepler’s shook his head, smiling, “That is among the most paranoid things I have ever heard. You should know you and Mr. Jacobi both are very important to this company and to me as your commanding officer.”

Maxwell ignored him.  “What are you going to tell Mr. Cutter?  What are you going to say about Jacobi?  He’ll pull the plug without even thinking.  Don’t pretend he won’t!  If you like us so much, put your money where your stupid mouth is. Do something to save Jacobi!” Maxwell’s heart thumped in her chest.  Her brain was catching up with her mouth and she wondered if Kepler might classify her as expendable, too.  But she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Kepler’s calm faltered. A coldness came over his features that usually meant he was about to make whatever fool questioned him regret they ever so much as learned to speak. Maxwell had been on the receiving end of that temper before.  It was never pleasant and, regardless of her pride, Maxwell usually ended up wishing she hadn’t gone up against Kepler. Even Jacobi, who tried desperately and constantly to please Kepler, sometimes fell victim to his anger.  No one below him was safe, even if you didn’t disrespect him, it was just infinitely worse if you had.  Maxwell braced herself for the hurricane of Kepler’s rage.  

But this time it was different. That intense frown didn’t come.  His face remained still, impassive. His anger didn’t swell, the storm never broke but, instead, passed overhead, ominous but calm.  He looked...for a moment Maxwell almost thought he looked sad, but she didn’t think he was capable of that.  Was that expression disappointment?  Remorse?  Worry?  She wasn’t sure, and it was gone too quickly for Maxwell to properly determine.  But for a fraction of a moment she saw neither of the two emotions she knew him capable of. It was an expression of neither obnoxious pride nor crushing rage. This unknown emotion flickered across his face and faded, like a firefly in the dark.  His expression went blank, his voice was flat and quiet, “Dr. Maxwell, I will do what I have to. You will do what you have to.”

“If you—”

“Let me try that again,” said Kepler more loudly, speaking over her in that familiar pseudo-soothing voice. The voice that came right before the thunder-crack of anger, “I _will_ do what I have to.  You _will_ do what you have to.   _Right now!”_ That was the roar she was familiar with and Maxwell ran off to her lab.  She didn’t know what Kepler _thought_ she “had” to do, but _she_ knew what she had to do.  And no one would stop her from doing it.  

 


	4. WARNORD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNORD
> 
> Noun.  Military. Abbreviation.  "Warning Order" 
> 
> An order that precedes an Operations Order; a notice of the orders or actions that are to follow.  

The plaque on the office door simply read “Cutter”.  Warren Kepler knocked gently, his cap under his arm.  An unfamiliar and unwelcome anxiety writhed in his gut.  

There were very few people in the world who that could intimidate him, let alone scare him.  Kepler had always known he was smarter, more ambitious, and stronger than his commanding officers.  He was _better_ than they were.  His compliance was a necessity, but he was always planning behind his smiles and “yes sirs.”  In all the world there was only one man he was afraid of, one man he didn’t think he could get the better of, and that man was Mr. Cutter.  

“Come in!” came Cutter’s friendly voice from the other side of the door.  Kepler could hear his smile.  An operatic score he didn’t recognize met his ears as he stepped inside.  Cutter was sitting at his desk.  He didn’t bother standing to greet Kepler.  He spun away from his computer, but only after a few good keystrokes, as if Kepler’s presence was less important than whatever spreadsheet he was working on.  “Warren!  Welcome, welcome!  Have a seat!”  He gestured to one of the chairs facing his desk.  

Kepler’s office was not small, but it could easily fit inside Cutter’s.  Cutter’s decorations were refined and recherché in a minimalist way.  Marble, glass, stark black and whites, inoffensive abstract shapes with rounded edges, potted bamboo. Two of Cutter’s walls were floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the entire complex.  Glancing up, Cutter could easily survey the whole of his kingdom.   

“Thank you, sir,” said Kepler quietly, obeying him.  It was difficult to pinpoint Cutter’s age.  He was not an old man, nor was he an unusually young one.  Kepler wasn’t even sure if Cutter was older or younger than he was.  It was difficult to say _much_ about Cutter based on his appearance, really.  He was neither thin nor fat, neither tall nor short. His accent was American and regionless, his skin was a pale brown that could have indicated an ancestry anywhere on the planet.  Mr. Cutter was entirely unassuming in every way.  He had no scars, no blemishes, as if everything in the world was afraid to touch him.   Everything about him was neat, professional, perfect.  Not a jet black hair out of place.  Not a smudge on his Italian leather shoes.  Not a single loose thread on his tailored suit.  He was poised, elegant, dangerous.  He reminded Kepler of a spider in its nearly invisible web.  

“I understand your favorite agent had a bit of an accident out in Colombia,” said Cutter.  That smile didn’t flicker.  Sharp.  Wide.  Cold.  Too many bared white teeth.  

There were times Kepler felt far more at ease with Cutter, times he felt like they were almost on the same level.  After all, Cutter had let Kepler into his inner circle.  He had Black Archive access, you could count on one hand how many people even knew they existed.  But then there were times that Kepler felt he was on the outside, dangling by a thread.  This was one of those times.  

Kepler inhaled, “Yes, sir. He did, sir.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t gotten your report yet,” said Cutter, he clasped his hands in front of him on his desk.  “I don’t know _how_ that could have possibly happened.  I’m sure you filed it when you were supposed to.  It might be a goof on my end, to err is human after all.  Is it my fault, Warren?  Or did you not file the report?”

“It’s…not your fault, sir.  The incident was complicated.  I’m still working on my write-up,” said Kepler carefully.

“I thought that might be the case,” said Cutter, with a tsk of disappointment.  “That’s why I called this little meeting, so we could discuss it in person.  How does that sound?”

“Outstanding, sir,” Kepler answered, trying not to show his anxiety.  

“I’m glad you agree,” Cutter’s voice was soft and friendly.   “So, how is Daniel doing?  You visited him today, didn’t you?  You and Alana both?”  

Kepler shouldn’t have been surprised Cutter knew that.  Cutter knew everything.  “Yes, sir.  We did.”

“And?” Cutter pressed.

Kepler took a breath, trying to buy himself time.  “He was wounded in action and, as I am sure you already know, sir, they had to perform an...emergency surgery to save Mr. Jacobi’s life.”  He was careful not to say “an amputation,” which it in fact was, but it sounded so final.  It was a death sentence for any military man’s career in the field and a literal one for Daniel Jacobi.  

“But not his hand,” Cutter put in.  

“No, sir.  His arm below the elbow was too badly maimed to repair.  The doctors amputated it shortly after he arrived,” Kepler said, trying not to wince.  There was a reason he hadn’t submitted the report.  The vain hope that somehow he could protect Jacobi long enough for Jacobi to prove his worth to Cutter.  Earlier, he hadn’t been completely lying to Maxwell, something he was not in the habit of doing with his underlings, when he said they were important to him.  They were his best agents.  And while he didn’t have any particular connection to Maxwell, indeed, if she was the one with her head on the block Kepler wouldn’t have done this, he did to Jacobi.  

Insofar as Warren Kepler liked anyone, he liked Daniel Jacobi.  Jacobi was a loyal man.  A driven man.   A selfish man.  A skilled man.  A petty man with something to prove.  A man who could be easily manipulated by his vices and by Kepler’s approval.  If not a naturally cruel man, then one quite easily driven to cruelty.  A man who could get the job done.  He was fast-thinking.  He was smart.  Smart but always marked by a qualifier.  Smart, but not independent.  Smart, but easily flattered.  Smart, but eager to please.  Smart, but a follower to his core.  Exactly the kind of man Kepler liked.

Jacobi had become Kepler’s right hand over the years since he pulled him out of that rathole bar in San Francisco.  You couldn’t see that pathetic bum under the soldier he’d become.  Kepler took a certain pride in that.  This was a man he’d help make; turned from something worthless but malleable into something strong, but still bendable.

And Jacobi relied entirely on Kepler.  He couldn’t afford to be disloyal even if he wanted to be.  As if Jacobi was capable of even a thought against Kepler.  He was dedicated to Kepler with every fiber of his being, ego, id, and superego.  Just as Kepler had predicted he would be those years ago.   _“Dost thou know me, fellow?” “No, sir, but you have that in your countenance which I would fein call master.”_ Kepler doubted Jacobi would get that reference even now.

However he looked at it, it would be difficult to lose Daniel Jacobi.    

“Now Warren, given your,” Cutter’s laugh was colder than ice, “almost troubling history of favoritism towards Daniel, I know this might be hard for you, but I need you to think of Goddard Futuristics rather than yourself when you answer my next question.  We’ve employed dear Daniel because of his expertise in ballistics, research and development _and_ field missions.  Given his new and obviously unfortunate predicament can Daniel still do his job?”

“Mr. Jacobi is the finest ballistics expert I have ever met, sir,” said Kepler slowly, carefully. “He has designed nearly as many weapons as he has built and disarmed.”  He swallowed.  “I think we need to take into account—”

“Warren,” Cutter said his name threateningly, like a teacher warning a disruptive student, “I didn’t ask your opinion.  I asked a simple question.  Let me try again: can Daniel still do his job?   _All_ parts of his job?”

Kepler sunk back in his chair.  “No, sir.”

The smile didn’t flicker. “That’s a shame, isn’t it?  He was very talented.” His spidery fingers prodded a few buttons on the desk phone and went to lift the receiver.  Kepler knew who would be on the other end.  He knew what would happen as soon as Cutter gave the order.  “ _And my poor fool is hanged.—No, no, no life?  Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all?”_

Just before Cutter lifted the phone, Kepler spoke up.  He had promised himself he wouldn’t do this.  He would just have to deal with losing Jacobi.  He was just another man.  An asset, but not a necessity.  But now that the time came and he had to actually watch the conversation that would end Jacobi’s life, Kepler couldn’t do it.  There was a chance he could save Jacobi and he couldn’t let it slip.  He would regret it if he didn’t try.  “Sir, if I may, please, object?” he asked quietly, almost meekly.

Cutter’s smile folded at the corners, drifting downward until it became grimace.  Kepler was suddenly very afraid.  A child’s fear coursing through him.  Cutter was the monster under everyone’s bed, that unknowable terror just waiting for you to make your final fatal mistake.  Why had Kepler been so stupid as to risk his neck for a doomed man? But then Cutter spoke almost kindly, “Yes, Warren?” His fingers remained frozen above the receiver.  “What is it?”

“Dr. Maxwell may have…no, _does_ have…the solution to Mr. Jacobi’s…” Kepler searched for a gentler word.  There wasn’t one.

“Amputation,” provided Cutter.

“Yes sir.”

“And without wasting anymore time, why don’t you tell me what might that be?” said Cutter testily.

“Sir, she is engineering a prototype prosthesis that would restore all functions to what they were before,” Kepler said quickly.

“Hmm,” Cutter seemed to think it over, but he never took his unblinking eyes off Kepler’s face, “You want me to waste this company’s valuable time and money on a dream of Alana’s, who,” a chuckle, “I should point out, is the only person in the world who likes Daniel more than you do.”  

“…I…sir…It’s not like that, not exactly.  Dr. Maxwell is brilliant and she’s already got an idea.”

“An idea?” Cutter repeated incredulously.  

“And plans, schematics,” Kepler added, “And she’s already gotten to work on it.”  He knew Maxwell well enough to know that was the case.

“That does sound like our Alana, doesn’t it?  Busy as a beaver.”  His hand moved away from the receiver.  “Well, Warren, I’m feeling _very_ generous today. Alana has 72 hours. Full access to whatever she needs, but 72 hours to create a prototype.  If she _can_ and it _works,_ then Daniel will be just fine and she’ll be rewarded for her contribution to medical science!” he said cheerily.  His tone fell as he continued, “If not…Goddard Futuristics’ doctors will do everything they can, but people in Daniel's position…it can be tricky. Very tricky.”  He sighed dramatically and shook his head, as if he was genuinely sorry, “Anything could happen. Tell Alana that, won’t you?”  

“Yes sir,” said Kepler urgently, “Thank you, sir.”

“And...make sure she knows what happens to employees who fail to make good on their promises,” Cutter said.  His smile glittered like a knife.  

“Yes sir,” Kepler said.  He knew very well what happened to people who failed Cutter, or people Cutter simply didn’t like.  He suppressed a shudder.  Kepler had been at this for years, he was one of the coldest and boldest men he knew, but even he paled at the thought of Cutter’s retributions.  Employees of Orwell’s Ministry of Love would have been afraid of Cutter.  

“Excellent!  Have a good day!” said Cutter, his warm demeanor returned.  Unfazed.  

“You too, sir,” Kepler got to his feet and crossed to the door.  

“Warren?” Cutter called to Kepler’s back.  

“Yes sir?” Kepler froze in the doorway.

“I would be careful how much trust I put in my underlings if I were you.  You’re only setting yourself up for failure,” his tone was odd.  Kepler tried to find Cutter’s eye but he was already working on his computer again.  “Goodbye, Warren,”  Cutter stressed with finality and Kepler found Cutter’s secretary’s hand on his arm.  She gently but firmly pulled and gestured towards the exit.  Cutter did not say another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW ABOUT LAST NIGHT'S EPISODE GUYS? 
> 
> Anyway, the next chapter is quite long so it might take a bit more time before it goes up.


	5. Broke-Dick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Broke-Dick  
> Noun.  Military slang.    
> Derogatory term for a soldier with a medical condition that prevents him from performing certain tasks.

 

Slowly…

Very slowly, Jacobi came to.

The first thing he was aware of was his own breathing. The tired thumping of his heart. He felt like he was floating, anonymous and formless, in a void. He was numb.

Gradually, his senses came back to him.  The smell of antiseptic and clean cotton. The sounds of movement on linoleum, and the hums and beeps of equipment.  The feeling of a stiff mattress under him, smooth cloth under his left hand.  His right arm throbbed.  Everything else was numb, except for that ache shooting down his arm, elbow to wrist.  

His right arm.

His eyes snapped open.  It took a moment for him to register where he was.  The last thing he remembered was being clammy and in pain, with twisting indistinct shapes around him, the smell of blood, and Maxwell’s voice echoing, bouncing around his head as if it was coming from the other side of a canyon.  Now he was in a bed in a room in what must be a hospital.

His vision focused as best it could without his glasses. To his left was a window that painted the white ceiling with stripes of bright yellow Florida sunshine.  There was a photograph on the far wall of a sailboat on calm water.  The walls were inoffensively off-white.  The lights were dim and fluorescent.  To his right was a blue curtain that obscured part of the door and, presumably, another bed from his view.

His mouth was dry and tasted terrible. His left arm was cold where he assumed the IV, just visible in the corner of his eye, connected to his body.  He could feel another catheter, this one in his neck, but it wasn’t connected to any visible bags or tubes at the moment.  Most likely in his jugular.  He knew he must have lost a lot of blood in the jungle; that catheter had probably been used to give him a blood transfusion.  There were several electrodes across his chest leading to the heart rate monitor beside him.  As he lay in bed taking in the scene, the events of the past 24 hours began to replay themselves.  His heartbeat spiked and it registered on the monitor.  He couldn’t remember everything; his memories got hazy after the tiger.  

Shit.  The tiger.  

He remembered the weight of its body baring down on him, bowling him over, the hot pain of its claws raking his chest.  He barely had time to register the pain before its fangs came down on his arm.  And his chest wounds were nothing compared the agony in his arm.  His vision swam from it, purple shapes exploded before his eyes.  He saw bright white bone.  Hot blood dripped down onto his face, soaked his shirt.  There was so much blood.  How could that all have been his?  How had he survived?

And then everything became confused, indistinct: shuffled snapshots, movie film that overheated and distorted, half-remembered fever dreams.  The wet jungle.  Maxwell’s voice.  Maxwell’s face and hands.  The warm water from Maxwell’s canteen.  Sand under him.  The dizzying waves of nausea and fear.  Shadows.  Cold and hot at once.  The roar of helicopter blades.  Kepler’s face appearing from the gloom, his voice echoing, “Looks like you need some help, Mr. Jacobi.  You’re going to be alright now.”  The dry air and heavy latex smell of the oxygen mask.  Then, darkness…

He had to know what happened.  What that thing did to him…there was no coming back from that.  But he had to know for sure.  Deep breath. He squeezed his eyes closed. And he tried to move the fingers of his right hand.  Nothing moved, nothing stirred. He couldn’t feel the sheets or the mattress under this ghost hand.  When he tried to lift it he couldn’t, because there was nothing there to lift.  He felt the pit of his stomach collapse.  He felt as if he was free-falling without the welcome rush of adrenaline.  He had no parachute to deploy, no rope to catch him. The worst had happened.  He was useless.  Weak.  Broke-dick.  Worse than dead.

“Mr. Jacobi?” Asked a voice he didn’t recognize.

Jacobi opened his eyes again. There was a woman standing over him, a nurse. She must have been summoned by the change in his heart rate.  She was small and white, brown haired, and brown-eyed.  If she were farther away, he might have mistaken her for Maxwell.  He was glad she wasn’t.

“Where’s Maxwell?” He croaked.

“As far as I understand it, Dr. Maxwell had some important business to attend to. She was here before surgery, and right after, but I haven’t seen her since.”

_Important business._

_Surgery._

_She hasn’t been here since._

Almost every word stung Jacobi, cut him to the core.  It hurt him in a way he would never admit aloud.

He wasn’t surprised Major Kepler wasn’t there.  He had no reason to be.  Jacobi knew that Kepler liked him, but he also knew Kepler well enough to be well aware that he was not one for the warm-fuzzies.  A Dicyanoacetylene fire couldn’t melt Kepler’s heart.  And if he was honest, he didn’t entirely blame Maxwell for not being there.  It still hurt, but he didn’t think he’d be able to do it either.  If their positions were reversed he didn’t know how he would be able to face her getting disfigured.

Disfigured.  

 _“Damn it all,”_ he thought.

He had to look.  He couldn’t avoid the right side of his body forever, or even for much longer.  No matter how badly he wanted this all to be a nightmare, it wasn’t.  It was really happening and nothing could change that. Ignoring the nurse as she asked if he needed anything, he took another deep breath and held it.  He gathered his resolve as best he could, raised his heavy head off the pillow, and opened his eyes.  

His right arm ended in a bandaged stump just above the elbow. Nausea overtook him and Jacobi gagged, crumpling in on himself. He didn’t throw up, but he thought he might. His heart pounded. He fell back, his breathing sharp and rapid.  He was desperately keeping his gauze-covered bicep out of sight. The muscular contractions from his gagging shot a wave of pain through every inch of him.  His bandaged chest ached under the hospital gown. He knew those wounds must have been sewn shut.  GF’s medical personnel might even be able to keep them from scarring.  But he still lost his arm.

He lost his arm.  

Oh God.

How could he do anything?  Ballistics was more than his livelihood, it was his _life._  It was everything.  It was what he was good at.  It was what he _did_.  It was how he defined himself.  What was he if he couldn’t assemble or disassemble a bomb?   _Who_ was he?  He could design weaponry, sure, but that would feel empty without being able to do the rest – to build his designs, to see them take shape, to blow them up, to proudly ride the detonation waves, to take in the breath-taking sublime explosions and know he was part of them, essential to them.  It was like the religious ecstasy he once read about in a history textbook.  Now there wouldn’t be same satisfaction.  There wasn’t the rush.  He had had that taken away from him now.  Even just using a gun (not _ever_ his weapon of choice, but better than nothing) would be difficult.  He’d have a harder time compensating for the recoil.  

He felt so impotent.  So small.  And he was.  He’d been made physically smaller.   _Literally_ smaller.  Robbed of an actual part of himself.  Made helpless.  Gutless.  Powerless.  Soft.  Craven.  Pathetic.

“Careful,” the nurse said, rubbing his left shoulder in what she must have thought was a soothing gesture. “Careful.  You don’t have the strength to try to get up yet.”

Jacobi glared at her. “Back off,” he growled, hoarsely. He used his hand…his only hand…to push her away from him. He didn’t need her coddling him.  He was a grown man.  He hated her for her pity.  Besides, she probably would have smothered him in his heavily medicated sleep had she gotten the order.  

Thinking about it, he didn’t know why she hadn’t.

Why hadn’t Cutter pulled the trigger?  Jacobi couldn’t go on any field missions like this.  That was half the job.  And he was SI-5, too high up, too important, he knew too much to be allowed to live after getting his pink slip.  Termination meant _termination_ – he was well aware of that.  So why were they waiting to kill him?  He touched the central venous catheter in the side of his neck.  They could have just poisoned him and be finished with it.  If someone...who was he kidding? If _Maxwell_ somehow managed to get an autopsy on him, nothing would come of the results.  Even Kepler would accept the official report.  Maxwell would probably be the only one who even cared.  

Jacobi’s mind was reeling.  He was afraid.  He hated being afraid.  His fear, his weakness, and his hatred for both of those things caused him more pain than his physical injuries at that moment.  

_Don’t be such a sissy, Dan._

_Don’t be a girl._

_Be a man._

_You’re a pussy._

_You’re weak – prove you aren’t._

_Toughen up._

_Grow a pair._

_I thought I had a son, guess I was wrong._

Even now, over a decade since he last saw his father, he could still hear his criticisms.  There was a dark little voice in Jacobi’s own head that he could never escape.  It did everything it could to make sure he still felt small.  Years of insults calcified and created the perfect echo chamber for his father’s taunts and his own darkest fears.  Always there, even now.  

But sometimes he felt like he had some counter, some medicine, some respite from it.  Something that made him feel...normal.  Something that alleviated his anxiety, if only for a little while.  It was Alana Maxwell.  

He wished she was here now.   

He didn’t know for sure, but he was almost certain most people didn’t have friends like Maxwell.  Most people didn’t have jobs that had them looking death in the face at least weekly, but he didn’t think the other SI agents had the same relationship he and Maxwell did.  Jacobi was infinitely glad for her.  They didn’t have someone they put their trust in both emotionally and physically on a daily basis.  It wasn’t even two years since he met her, but he didn’t think he could ever go back to being alone again.

Growing up, Jacobi didn’t have friends.  He wasn’t like the other boys.  If he could manage to forget that, his father made sure he didn’t.  Jacobi didn’t play or watch sports.  He was bored by them.  He didn’t like hunting or fishing.  He didn’t want to play soldier or cops-and-robbers.  He was overly emotional.  As a teenager, he didn’t care about sex or girls.  He was more interested in academics than his classmates.  He wanted approval.  He was physically weaker than his peers.  

Even with a father in the military, Jacobi’s teachers didn’t trust his mechanical and meticulous interest in guns, weaponry, and, especially, explosives and fire.  Even the other nerdy kids, the other know-it-alls, the other Gifted-and-Talented students, avoided him.  No one liked a kid who played with fire.  Everyone kept their distance.  His family moved around a lot.  He was this nerdy little ghost, drifting from school to school.  Sometimes, as a small child, he used to wonder if anyone in the world liked him.  

He wondered if there was a way to make his father like him.  Jacobi always knew he didn’t, his dad made that point clearly and constantly.  He made sure his son never forgot what a disappointment he was.  

As an adult, he wondered why people just ignored all those warning signs.  Weren’t people supposed to speak up if they saw a parent taunting their kid every damn day?  Weren’t neighbors and teachers supposed to call the cops if they noticed a kid with bruises?  He would have loved to see his father thrown into prison for what he did to him.  To see _him_ bullied for once.  Maybe they never realized what was going on in the Jacobi house, the constant belittling and tormenting, the occasional bouts of physical violence.  Little Dan Jacobi hardly had a clean reputation when it came to schoolyard fights.  He was a wise-assed little brat who spurred on his bullies.  Maybe they assumed he baited his father, too, and that they saw the final explosive shouts of a man at the end of his rope, rather than the average exchange between father and son. Maybe they never realized his dad hit him harder than his classmates did.

In elementary school there were sometimes entire weeks where every day Jacobi had an opponent waiting for him after school.  Teachers would pull the combatants apart, the principal would call their parents, and when Jacobi came home, he was In For It.  His father didn’t have a problem with his son getting into fights.  He didn’t even mind if Jacobi’s snideness started them.  What he hated was that weedy Dan Jacobi was never strong enough to win those fights on his own.  When he came home with bruises from the playground, his father added new ones and told him to go back out there and _win_.  And then he would lose again.  Inevitable.  Sure as shit.  A self-fulfilling prophecy.  A snake eating its own tail.  A Benzene molecule.

Around the time he started going by “Daniel” in middle school, he stopped picking fights he couldn’t win.  Fewer bruises.  More taunts.  Just as much of a disappointment.  Even less of a man.  

By high school, his weirdness was cemented, but so was his tactic for dealing with abuse.  The other boys would taunt him, call him a fag, call him a Chink, steal his backpack, throw pennies at him, shove him, hit him, throw things at the back of his head, put things in his hair, ruin his lunch, spread stories...make his life Hell however they could, but he only ever tossed contempt and sarcasm back at them.  Jacobi would swallow up his anger, pack it into a tight little ball in the pit of his stomach and take it out on inanimate objects when he got home. He spent his afternoons blowing things sky-high behind whatever little makeshift lab he’d built for himself.  

With every successful blast he would feel that ball of emotion loosen.  He would feel release.  Sometimes, when things were really bad, he would scream with the explosion.  He would scream until he was crying and laughing and his adrenaline was flowing and everything, _everything_ would feel better.

He stole chemicals from his schools’ science labs.  Sometimes the family would move before he got caught, sometimes they didn’t and he got suspended, but he always kept his stores full.  He owned copies of _The Anarchist Cookbook_ and _The Poor Man’s James Bond_ that he kept hidden in his mattress.  He experimented with dangerous compounds.  They often literally blew up in his face.  He had fewer bruises, but he sure as Hell got a lot more burns.  He still had some of those scars.  They were funny now, made him laugh. He made so many mistakes back then, he was surprised he hadn’t killed himself before graduating high school.  

He did graduate, and left home for college.  He left a friendless, empty life behind.  The last time he saw his father was when his dad said he wasn’t surprised that Jacobi couldn’t make it into the Air Force.  Jacobi never got that salute.  He never would.  He was still bitter about that.  

He liked his first job and his coworkers. He’d liked the men who had died that day. Neither of them had been his friends, but he saw them every day. He liked them as much as he’d ever liked anyone.  Nice guys.  Good guys. One of them had a baby daughter and a wife.  One of them had a cat and a roommate that everyone knew wasn’t just a roommate.  One always had candy on hand, hated coffee and made a point about both of those things.  One of them always did the crossword on the way out to the field, to stave off Alzheimer’s, he said.  He would never get the chance to find out if it worked.

A flash of light.  A wave of intense heat.  The loudest sound Jacobi had ever heard.  They didn’t even have time to scream.  Here one second, gone the next.  C’est la vie.  Your team.  Your bomb.  Your job.  Your head.  You’ll never work on this planet again.  Anyone he knew in that life was as dead as those two men insofar as their relationship with Jacobi.  

He had been determinedly drinking himself to death when Kepler waltzed into his life.  He still didn’t know if Kepler had planned it, or if it had been sheer serendipity that lead Kepler into that bar on that day.  Depending on his mood, Kepler had implied both scenarios: “Why do you think I tracked you down in that rat-infested dive bar?  You’re too good!” or “If you mess this up, Jacobi, I _swear_ to any and every god ever conceived by man that I will make you wish I _never_ stumbled into that Hellhole and found your sorry, pathetic hide!”

Either way, Goddard Futuristics had been a dream. Even if it hadn’t been his last hope, he would have liked the job.  It was everything he wanted. Action. Excitement. Adrenaline. Explosions.  

He was good at it. Very good. And he was rewarded for being good at it.  Goddard Futuristics recognized his worth.  Kepler appreciated him.  For the first time in his life, people appreciated him!  People respected him!  Every time Kepler gave him a pat on the back, he wished he could rub it in his father’s stupid face.   _Look who made something of himself, pop. Look who is more than you ever were – your son: Daniel Jacobi._  Kepler gave Jacobi all the things he’d ever wanted as a kid.  Recognition.  Rewards.  Petty power.  He got to be the Big Man for once.  Dish out what he’d always been served.  He loved it!  

But he didn’t have friends.  As close as they were, Jacobi and Kepler were never friends.  Kepler was on an entirely different level than Jacobi, and Jacobi would never forget that, even without the help Kepler provided.  By the time Maxwell changed everything, Jacobi had long since given up on “friends.”  He was used to being lonely.  Apart from the rest.  The odd man out.  He thought it was how he would always be.  He had come to think he didn’t need friends.  

Then he met Maxwell.

And she filled the void he thought he’d forced closed.  She brought a sense of warmth.  She made him feel secure, supported; it was something he’d never felt before.  No matter how bad things got, Maxwell was there for him and he was there for her.  They had each other’s backs.  No matter what happened, Maxwell understood.  They shared a bond neither one of them could name.  That Jacobi didn’t want to name.  She made him feel safe, happy, normal.  

 _Safe_.  Jesus, that was pathetic.  They were both so desperate that just knowing each other helped so much.  But somehow, depending on Maxwell didn’t make him feel those pangs of guilt and self-hatred that symptoms of weakness usually did.  When he first realized how much he needed her, it had.  But somehow he’d gotten over that angst, which was something Jacobi rarely did.  Internalize things?  Yes.  Constantly.  Get over them?  Never.  He was still mad at Josh Pearlman, the kid who broke his glasses in Hebrew School when they were ten.  But, somehow, it no longer bothered him that he depended on Maxwell.  He thought maybe this one time he was able to get over that shame because Maxwell depended on him just as much as he did on her.  They were equal.  They were the same.

Maxwell wasn’t any different from him.  She was quieter about her hatred of her childhood, which was surprising to Jacobi, considering how loud her rage could get.  He had begun to think he was the emotional equivalent of HMX and she was hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane: she produced 20% more anger with less visible evidence.  

She too was taunted and teased for being a nerd and an introvert.  She too used to break into her school after hours – not to steal their meager stores of nitric acid and sulfur like Jacobi did, but because her family didn’t own a computer until Maxwell’s senior year of high school when she finally saved up enough to buy one herself.  She also wasn’t like the others: she didn’t like boys or make up or care about how she looked.  Her peers treated her like a leper because of her differences, just as Jacobi’s treated him.  She too hated and avoided her classmates, her parents, her teachers.  She too was a disappointment to her father.  She also had something she loved that no one else understood (for him it was explosives, for her it was computers).  She also appreciated that something on a level no one else seemed to.  And she also got so used to being lonely, she forgot she was lonely.  

She too was both a little afraid and a little proud of how different she was from other people.  That dark little voice always told Jacobi there was something wrong with him.  That his father was right.  That they were all right.  But Maxwell reassured him he was right to be proud about some of those differences.  They were smarter than other people.  Better.  

It was just endlessly comforting to know that Maxwell, so much like him, existed in the world.

It was encapsulated the night they first went to the Blue Moon Diner, before Maxwell got them banned from it.  “I am, too!” she had said to Jacobi, “I’ve never been interested either!…And I’ve just…I’ve never met somebody else like me!”  She was a virgin just like he was.  A virgin who didn’t see the point in losing her virginity.  Who didn’t want to.  Who never looked at someone and wanted to see them naked, to kiss them, to touch them, to have sex with them; who couldn’t even _fathom_ that sentiment.  Maybe she tried to make herself “right” like he did. Maybe she also tried to force the feeling she was missing, to correct her response, made up crushes and tried to make them real.  Jacobi had tried to fix himself for years.  He didn’t give up until grad school.  He never could bring himself to actually _do_ anything with anyone, even though he thought he _should_ .  It would be the only way to make himself right, but it was so far from what he wanted he came up with excuses to rationalize not going through with it.  The fact he lacked attraction had been one of the things in his life Jacobi had hidden from most.  Men and women were equally unappealing.  He was so sexually _wrong,_ he wasn’t even _gay_ .  It didn’t even make him feminine; it made him _less_.  It made him feel neutered and inadequate than most things.  

Before Maxwell put a jackhammer to that mental lockbox, Jacobi never thought he would have been able to reconcile it.  But he did.  Because she made him.  Because she was like him.  Because they were the same, and in all honesty he’d rather be like Alana Maxwell than his father.  With a single sentence she lifted the boulder that had been crushing him since he was thirteen years old.  He wasn’t broken.  Or, at the very least, if he was broken, he was in good company.  

It was funny, Maxwell didn’t seem like anyone special at first.  He remembered the day he met her, when Kepler was showing her around.  His immediate response was annoyance, she was taking up Kepler’s time and he needed to talk to the Major.  Jacobi had a test he wanted to run on a new ASAT missile. He’d already been forced to push it back thanks to an error in the guidance system, but now everything was “all clear.”  And here was this tiny white chick in her lab coat obstructing his way to Major Kepler.  She couldn’t have been much taller than five feet (5’2”, he would learn later on, after he started teasing her by putting things just out of her reach).  She had frizzy brown hair pulled back into a desperate ponytail, just to keep the uncontrollable cloud out of her face.  She had big brown eyes and a pale oval face.  Her skin was so white, Jacobi used to wonder if she ever went outside (the answer was rarely, and she got hilariously sunburned when she did.  Their mission in Egypt had been particularly amusing for that).  She was younger than he was and her height and face made her look even more so than she actually was.  He assumed she had just graduated college and had been lured into Goddard Futuristics before someone else could grab her.  Yet another brilliant mastermind out of Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard or Yale or Heidelberg or who the Hell cares?  

But she quickly grew on him.  It started when she helped him fix his car and they went out to Lucky Panda. They were weirdly inseparable ever since. He wasn’t even sure how it happened. It just _did_.

The first time he realized how much he depended on her was after the only mission for Goddard Futuristics that actually made him feel guilty in years: when Cutter had him burn down a hospital.  He still didn’t know what the man who doomed the entire hospital had done, but he didn’t ask questions.  He just knew that a man inside, Theippan Myat Min Thura, was on Cutter’s shit-list. It was a very short list because it was so regularly trimmed and this time Jacobi was given the shears.  Kepler told Jacobi it was a very important mission, a personal request from Mr. Cutter himself.  Kepler assured him he was specially suited to this task and that he would be fantastically rewarded for his success.  Then he handed Jacobi the dossier and waited for him to read it.  

“A-a hospital, sir?” Jacobi remembered glancing up in shock from the mission dossier.  They were in Kepler’s huge office.  Kepler was sitting on the other side of the desk in his criminally comfortable-looking leather chair.  He was idly playing with his Newton’s cradle as Jacobi read.  

Jacobi had destroyed hundreds of buildings by that point, whether through other people’s use of the weapons he designed or with his own hand on the detonator.  Many of the buildings blown up in his time with Goddard Futuristics had been occupied at the time – possibly _all_ of the buildings he blew up outside of testing had been occupied.  But none of them had been hospitals; they were offices, the homes of particular officials, rival companies, laboratories, conspicuous warehouses, nondescript buildings on the side of the highway.  Sure, hospitals were collateral damage sometimes, but for some reason doing it this way, intentionally, bothered him more.  Maybe it was that his instructions weren’t to detonate the hospital but to burn it.  Maybe it was that the end goal was to destroy the place so entirely not even a shadow remained.  Maybe it was the idea of maximizing casualties to ensure none of Myat Min Thura’s comrades escaped.  It rested heavily in his throat, like food he couldn’t force down.  

“Yes, indeed,” Kepler said, his too-blue eyes rose to find Jacobi’s dark ones as the subordinate squirmed uneasily in his seat.  “Is there a problem, Mr. Jacobi?”

“Uh…I’m not…” he swallowed, “I’m not sure, sir.”

“You’re...not...sure?” he repeated slowly in that familiar tone, the threat of violence in his voice.  

Jacobi winced like a dog that had been kicked before.  “Well, sir, I’m not sure why we’re attacking a hospital.”

“The dossier _clearly_ states that the target is presently confined to a bed,” said Kepler.  “All of his research is confined with him.”

“Yes, sir, but…” Jacobi knew he had no moral high ground.  He didn’t _want_ a moral high ground.  He _never_ wanted a moral high ground.  He didn’t want moral ground of any height.  Morality had no place in his life or his work.  This was just another mission.  So why couldn’t he convince himself of that fact?  “It’s a hospital, sir,” he said pathetically.

“Yes, it is.  Well spotted,” said Kepler, sarcastically.  Jacobi looked apprehensively at his CO.  “Does that bother you, Mr. Jacobi?” the Major asked, leaning forward.  

Jacobi didn’t answer, he looked away from Kepler, flipping through the dossier again, unable to meet his gaze.  

 _“I_ chose _you_ for this _extremely important_ mission because you are the best man I have,” Kepler’s tone began dark as a thunder cloud, but lightened as he continued, becoming soft and praising.  Then it dove dangerously again, “but if you _don’t_ think you can _handle this vital objective,_ maybe someone else can!”   

Jacobi tensed.  Major Kepler always knew just how to get to him.  Threatening to take his job away, to give it to someone else, was worse than anything else he could say.  Jacobi liked that Kepler treated him as a confidant, that he seemed to depend on him.  He always felt a welling of pride whenever Kepler described him as “the best man I have.”  He selfishly clung to that with all of his might.    

“Of course I can, Major Kepler, sir!” Jacobi assured him.

“Outstanding!  Good luck, Mr. Jacobi.  I expect a full report when you get back!”

The mission was, of course, a success.  Of the God-knew-how-many people in the hospital, only a half dozen or so made it out.  None were the target.  None of the survivors knew the target or anything about his research.  None even recognized the name Myat Min Thura.  The man and his work were destroyed.  Nothing was left.   

Cutter’s list got shorter.  Jacobi was given a bonus and a pat on the back.  He should have been proud of himself.  He wasn’t.  After work he blew up a nearby duck pond to unwind.  It didn’t help.  

He felt...strange...over the next few days.  Maxwell accused him of being distant.  The mission didn’t sit right with him and he couldn’t get away from it.  He’d burned down dozens of buildings before, but for some reason, this time it bothered him.  This time it bothered him and he couldn’t hide from it no matter how hard he tried.  

Jacobi thought he had finally staked his conscience, but here it was again, a vampire made of the final shreds of his humanity, empathy, and decency.  Why couldn’t it just leave him alone?  Why did he have to keep thinking about the kid he heard screaming?  The hysterical woman who jumped out the window and landed on the ground covered in burns and blood, her broken body smoldering as she sobbed out her last?  The desperate firemen who didn’t know that the chemical accelerant wouldn’t respond well to water, that they were only making it worse?

That Friday night as he was driving home after leveling yet another duck pond, he changed course. Instead of going to his apartment building, he turned off into Maxwell’s neighborhood.  He told himself it was just to say hi.  Maybe watch a movie.  Maxwell admitted she had never seen _Jaws,_ a fact Jacobi wanted to amend.  But he knew that wasn’t why he was going.  He knew it was because he didn’t want to go home to his empty apartment to think about the dying screams he’d caused.  

He was infuriated with himself.  It wasn’t as if any of this was _new._ He had killed so many people he’d long since lost count. He had quite the catalog of death shrieks in his memory bank.  He had done all of this before, a _lot._ It was business as usual when you designed some of the world's largest Things that Break Other Things.  But this time it had been different.  Maybe it was because so many of the victims burned slowly to death.  Maybe it was because they were in a hospital, sick people, kids, dozens of them.  Back when he had feelings he always felt worse about hurting people like that.  He wasn’t sure what made him feel again, what opened up that emotional scar tissue.  But it happened and his old tactic of hiding from his guilt and waiting for it to close up again wasn’t working.

Maxwell lived in a small two-family home in a quiet, swampy neighborhood. Her landlords lived in the house next door and knew her as Alyssa Payne-Gaposchkin, a young woman from California who worked for NASA.  Maxwell introduced Jacobi to them as her friend, Jason Jang, the name under which Goddard Futuristics rented Jacobi’s apartment.  The landlords clearly thought Maxwell and he were in some kind of illicit tryst.   They were an elderly and perpetually annoyed couple with an elderly and perpetually annoyed bichon frise.  Jacobi was glad their car wasn’t in the driveway that night.  Maxwell was definitely alone.

He told himself going to Maxwell’s had nothing to do with the hospital fire.  He had nearly convinced himself of it by the time he knocked on Maxwell’s door.  Maxwell answered quickly.  She looked at Jacobi in surprise.  They had no plans, he hadn’t texted ahead, he just turned up on her doorstep. “Jacobi?  What’s up?”

He meant to shrug and say, “Oh, I was just in the neighborhood.”  He meant to say, “nothing much.”  But instead, he said, “I burned down a hospital.”

“What?”  Maxwell asked in confusion. “When?  Where? What are you talking about?”

“Tuesday.  Myanmar.  It was that mission I went on.”

“Is…that a problem?” Maxwell asked.  She understood as well as he did that people like them had no business having qualms or morals.  This was their job whether they liked it or not.  

He shrugged.  

“Are you okay?” she tried.  

“Yeah,” he said.  Then, “I should be…”

“Daniel?”  She studied his face carefully, then said,  “Come inside.”

“Sure,” Jacobi said following her in.  

Maxwell’s house was neat, at the very least compared to his own cave.  She didn’t live as cluttered an existence. She wasn’t a desperate packrat like he was. She certainly didn’t have a huge collection of aging military paraphernalia.  What her house did suffer from was a lack of maintenance, chipped paint, rusty hinges, and a certain Spartan emptiness that came from the fact that so much of Maxwell’s life just didn’t exist materially.  She did have the remains of half-completed and half-junked computers and machines, things that everyone else had given up on.  But she kept those organized, spread out over her dining room table and chairs, cluttered, but not messy.  

“It’s not a big deal,” Jacobi said.  “I’m fine.  Everything’s fine.”

“I know,” said Maxwell.  “Do you want coffee?”

“…Sure,” Jacobi said.

He followed her into the kitchen, feeling sickeningly like a little kid looking for reassurance.  He should have been stronger than this.  He should have forced this down in that ever-growing ball in his gut.  But here he was.  He stood in the door, leaning against the frame, looking at the cracked ceiling.  Maxwell spoke, “Hand me the coffee grinder?  I don’t want to get my step ladder.”

Jacobi snorted and disconnected himself from the door.  “Shrimp.”

“This is why I keep you around, so I always have access to high shelves,” she said.

“Careful, or I might use that against you,” Jacobi said, passing her the dulled red grinder.

There was a pause as Maxwell went about making the coffee. “Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked handing Jacobi a mug.  

“Sure,” Jacobi said distractedly.  “What’ve you got?”

“Whatever the internet has to offer.  Which is better, _Jaws_ or _Deep Impact_?”

“ _Jaws_ is actually a good movie.   _Deep Impact_ is only good because stuff blows up.”

They watched _Jaws_ .  They actually watched all four _Jaws_ movies.  They sat in Maxwell’s living room on her threadbare couch drinking coffee, eating popcorn, and watching progressively worse movies.  At one point, about halfway through the second film, when Jacobi was thinking about the hospital again, Maxwell punched him hard on the right arm.  She was small but deceptively strong.  

“Ow!  Hey!  What was that for?” Jacobi asked, rubbing his arm bitterly.  

“Don’t mope,” Maxwell said.  

“What?”

“Moping will never fix anything,” she added.  

“Maybe it’s helping me.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“No,” he admitted, “it isn’t.”

“What’s done is done and regret has never fixed that,” Maxwell said seriously.  “You need to move on.”

“I didn’t say I _regretted_ it,” he muttered, rubbing his arm.  A pause.  Then, “Should…should I not have done it?”

She jabbed the spacebar and paused the movie with a sigh. Jacobi didn’t know if it was of annoyance or thought.  “I don’t know.”

“I thought you knew everything.”

“Even genius has limitations,” she said.  She gave him a half smile that flickered and died when she saw the expression on his face.  “I think the answer’s up to you.”

“I don’t know, either.” He leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes.  “I don’t know if I _want_ to know.”  There was quiet for a moment, then Jacobi added, “I thought I was done feeling bad about this stuff.”  He glanced over at her, “I liked it.”

“Maybe it never really goes away,” Maxwell said.  “You’ve been at this longer than me but sometimes I just…” she trailed off and shook her head,“and if it’s still getting to you…”

Well, now that was something else they shared.  Even though they were horrible, even though they were determined to be bad, sometimes the good in them refused to die and stabbed back at them like a poison dagger.  They were monsters, but some shred of their former humanity persisted.  

“Yeah,” Jacobi said.  “I know.”  A sigh, “I guess it still sneaks up on you sometimes.   It sucks.”

“It does,” Maxwell agreed.  Then they kept watching.

During the third movie, Jacobi asked something he didn’t mean to, “Am I…am I a terrible person?”  He knew he was.  He had even said that he was in the past.  He _enjoyed_ it when he was with Kepler.  He reveled in being terrible, relished being a bully, but without Kepler around, sometimes the dagger’s poison throbbed through him and made him wonder if he shouldn’t feel at least _a little_ guilty about what he had become.

Maxwell spoke frankly and without a pause, “Yes.”

“Ah.”

“Well, that can’t be a surprise!” Maxwell said incredulously.  She looked up at him.  “You _know_ that you are.  You know that _I_ am.”  She poked him in the chest, “You were the one who told me that just because we’re monsters who do monstrous things doesn’t mean it’s always easy.”  

“That’s true,” Jacobi muttered.  It had been something he said to her right after she killed for the first time.  She had been crying, staring at the corpse.  Jacobi hauled it off.  He also told her that it went away, eventually - the guilt, the agony.  Eventually you even understood why you did those monstrous things.  The weird twisted logic of the world of the Strategic Intelligence Division started to make sense.  You _embrace_ being a monster.  It’s not like they have a choice, and really it isn’t so bad in the end.  Clearly, that wasn’t always true.  

“Besides, I’ve met ‘good’ people, Daniel, and they’re not that great.  They’re not much better than we are, really, and they are far, _far_ harder to tolerate.”  

Jacobi snorted, “Yeah, I’ll give you that.”  

The movie started again.  

“At least I’m in good company,” Jacobi muttered more to himself than Maxwell.  

“Huh?” Maxwell asked.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” He was embarrassed she’d overheard him.  

Maxwell didn’t look at him, but smiled at the screen when she said, “We’re both in good company.”  A pause, then she continued, “I’d rather be monsters together than scrupulous, bored, and alone.”

“Me too,” Jacobi admitted.  Then, more loudly, as if to drown out his unease at being so honest about his feelings, trying to ignore the fact that he could just hear his father calling him names for seeking Maxwell’s companionship and comfort, he said, “Now, let’s watch a super fake shark destroy SeaWorld.”

He must have fallen asleep on Maxwell’s couch that night before the end of _Jaws: The Revenge,_ but after they’d both exhausted their Michael Caine impressions.  He woke up the next morning feeling better than he had in days.   At some point in the night Maxwell draped a blanket over him.  He left it on the couch, got up, went downstairs to the kitchen.  He made coffee and breakfast from the meager contents of Maxwell’s fridge.  He wasn’t surprised her refrigerator was largely barren; Maxwell often got so wrapped up in her work she forgot to eat.  She almost certainly got too wrapped up in it to remember to go food shopping.  Possibly weekly.

When he left later that morning, the landlady and bichon frise watched from their dining room window, clearly hoping to catch something juicier than Jacobi saying, “See you Monday.”

Maxwell, still wearing her bathrobe and bunny slippers said, “Tonight, my copy of GTA should be coming from Amazon.”

“Then, see you tonight.”

They had each other’s backs.  Except for now, apparently.  

But as he lay there, bitter and self-pitying, in his hospital bed, something came back to him through the cloud of the night before.  Maxwell’s voice, fuzzy like an out of tune radio, saying, _“You’ve seen_ The Six Million Dollar Man _!  Make the connection!  I am going to build you an amazing cyborg arm!”_

A weight lifted, just as it had outside the Blue Moon Diner all those months ago.  It was enough that he didn’t feel as if he was being crushed under the enormity of losing his arm, potentially losing everything.  Maxwell would come through.  That was why he was still alive, because Maxwell was going to save him.  Jacobi felt a tired smile quirk at the corner of his mouth.  

They had each other’s backs.  Always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I hope to get at least one more chapter up before the next episode on Monday, they're with my proof-reader now.


	6. BFH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BFH  
> Noun.  Military Slang.  Abbreviation.  “Big fucking hammer.”    
> A difficult mechanical job.

 

Maxwell knew she would never forget the first time she killed someone.

It was early in her time at Goddard Futuristics, nearly two months after Kepler finally got her to give in and sign on.  

There was a break-in at the lab one evening.  It was late, she and Jacobi were the last two human beings left in the building, and two of only three lifeforms still there – the last being Eunomia, the laboratory’s AI assistant.  These days, Jacobi probably wouldn’t have waited up, knowing that when Maxwell was this absorbed in a project she probably wouldn’t leave until 1 or 2 AM at the earliest.  But he hadn’t yet learned that lesson.  She coded at her computer terminal.  “Five more minutes,” she said glancing momentarily up at Jacobi.  

Jacobi sat backwards in a desk chair reading a broken-spined paperback copy of Stephen King’s _Dreamcatcher_.  “Uh-huh,” he said sarcastically, turning the page.  “Just like you said two hours ago.”

“Maybe ten minutes,” Maxwell conceded.  “An hour, tops.”

Jacobi said nothing, gave her a disbelieving look, and returned to his book.  A minute of near silence passed when, suddenly, the lights flickered and died.  The emergency lights did not turn on.

“What the Hell happened?” Jacobi asked.  

“I’m not sure,” Maxwell answered. “Eunomia?”

The AI’s chipper voice answered, “Yes, Dr. Maxwell?”

“What happened to the lights?”

“What do you mean?” Eunomia asked, her chipper tone changing.  

“They’re _off!”_ Jacobi pointed out, “We simple humans can’t see in the dark!”

“But...my sensors aren’t indicating anything’s wrong,” said Eunomia.  “All sensory data is nominal.”

“It’s _not_ nominal down here,” Jacobi assured her.  “Check the lights.”

“The lights are… they’re off!  The system’s been compromised!  But… that doesn’t match my input at all!”

“Whose fault is that?!” Jacobi grumbled.

“I don’t think it’s Eunomia’s,” said Maxwell slowly.  “I think...I think someone might have hacked into her receptor systems.  I think they’re altering the sensory data…”

“What?” Eunomia asked, her digital voice revealing shock and horror.  

“Can anybody _do_ that?” asked Jacobi.  

“Yes,” Maxwell answered.  “I could and so can four other people I can think of.  But why would they want to?”

“Because another multi-billion dollar corporation is probably giving them a big fat cheque to do it,” Jacobi replied.  In the light from her computer screen she saw Jacobi close his book and stand up.  “Eunomia, this place’s got emergency lights.”

“Yes, Mr. Jacobi,” Eunomia sounded rattled.   

“It wasn’t a question.  Turn them on.”

“Oh, right,” the AI said, and the dim red lights flickered on.  

“You will be okay,” Maxwell assured her.  “We’ll catch whoever did this to you.”

“Thank you, Dr. Maxwell.”

Jacobi took his RIA 1911 from his holster and cocked it.  “Get your gun,” he said to Maxwell.  

She blinked.  She wasn’t used to carrying any weaponry yet.   Jacobi always seemed to have at least a firearm on him – she wouldn’t have been surprised if she found out he was carrying a liter of Nitroglycerin at all times – but she kept her gun in her desk drawer.  

“Maxwell,” he said with some force when she didn’t immediately respond.  “This isn’t a joke.  If someone got in here, they mean business.”  

“Right.” She opened the drawer and removed the gun from where it was acting as a particularly dangerous paperweight.  

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.  Eunomia, work on fixing the lights, but don’t let the SOB know we’re onto them.”

“Yes, Mr. Jacobi.”

They split up to comb the complex for the spy.  Maxwell held her gun in front of her still feeling awkward, both terrified and amused at the thought that she was carrying a loaded pistol in a blackened building as if she were Dana Scully.  She didn’t know why she felt so strange.  It wasn’t as if she was a stranger to guns.  Her family had many out in Montana and often went hunting.  When she was growing up they had had four hunting rifles, three shotguns – even though food was readily available without killing it themselves – and a handgun for “home protection.”  Despite the fact that they lived in a town where everyone feared and revered her father.  The residents would sooner starve than steal from Pastor Maxwell.  But she was never interested in the guns nor, as a girl, was she forced to attend hunting trips like her three brothers were.  And their hobby seemed as different from this as shooting a home movie differed from a feature film.  This was so much more _real_.  

Maxwell happened to find the spy first.

She heard a noise and stiffened, staring into the darkness.  A shape rounded a corner.  He was tall, dressed all in black from his boots to his mask.  He startled her and almost before she knew what she was doing she fired off four shots.  Her wrist cracked back from the recoil.  The _bang, bang, bang, bang!_ echoed endlessly around her.    The man fell to the ground, collapsing, like a puppet whose strings have been cut.  Her gun felt hot and heavy in her hands.  She slowly lowered it.  Her heart was pounding in her ears.

“Maxwell?!” Jacobi’s voice from behind her.  She didn’t know how long she had been standing there.  She didn’t look at him.  She stood transfixed over her victim.  “Alana?!”

It was the first time he ever said her given name and it startled her out of her near-fugue state.  She turned to face him.  “D-Daniel?” And for some reason there was something comforting in calling him by his first name and hearing him say hers.  It meant they knew each other.  It meant they trusted each other.  They were friends.  They were friends and he could help her with this.  He had her back.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head.  His run became a jog, then a walk as he approached the body.

Maxwell thought she might cry and she cursed herself for that.  She was shaking so badly.  Her eyes followed Jacobi to the corpse.  She watched as he examined the body.  Tears flooded her eyes, and she couldn’t force them back.  They streamed silently down her cheeks. 

The four shots had hit the intruder in the shoulder, the gut, the chest, and the last cleaved his face, entering on the left side of his chin and exiting behind his right ear.  There was no need to check for a pulse.  The pool of cooling blood looked black in the dark.  There was a gun beside him, a Colt.  Jacobi picked it up and checked the clip.  Full.  He checked the man’s equipment belt.  A touch screen, a glass cutter, a few other tools, a thumb drive.  Jacobi pocketed that last.  

He pulled off the man’s balaclava, letting his head thud hard against the ground.  Jacobi took out his flashlight and turned the light on the man’s face.  Maxwell did not recognize the face beneath the mask, but that might have been because it was so altered by that last bullet.  The hall reeked.  “Do you know him?” Jacobi asked.

Maxwell shook her head and managed a whispered, “no.”

“We’re okay,” he said.  He looked back up at Maxwell.   _She_ wasn’t _._  She did this.  She killed a man and it hit her harder than she ever expected.  She sank to her knees, one hand over her mouth.  She had seen animals die; she didn’t think it would be any different for a person.  But it _was_.  Maybe it was because she was the one holding the gun.  “...Alana…” He said her name, looked from her to the body, and back.  Seeing her expression, he sighed, and then spoke gently, more gently than she had ever heard him before, “I’ll clean this up.  You go get Eunomia up and running.  Meet me back in your lab.”

Maxwell nodded but didn’t reply.  Within minutes, she had Eunomia running properly again, removing the program that was altering the AI’s sensory input. Eunomia had already fixed the lighting system.  She went back to the lab and sunk into her desk chair.  She stared at the wall, trying not to think about what happened and thinking of nothing else.  

It felt like hours before Jacobi came back.  There was blood on his clothes, but he’d washed it off his hands.  When they left later there was no trace of what had happened in the hallway.  

Jacobi looked at her and the businesslike expression disappeared from his face; it softened into a look Maxwell had never seen on him before.  An expression she had very rarely seen in her lifetime.  Empathy.  Sympathy.  Something like that.  No one had ever cared about her enough for that before.  “Do you want a coffee?” he asked.  

She nodded.  

He crossed to the Keurig and popped in one of the plastic pods.  “Half and half, right?”

“Yes,” Maxwell said quietly.  He took the carton from the mini-fridge and poured some into her cup, mixing it with a plastic stirrer.  He sucked the excess coffee off the stirrer before tossing it into the trash.  Then he crossed to Maxwell, pushing the chair he’d been sitting in earlier closer so he could sit next to her.  

He put the coffee on her desk, took her gun from his belt and put it back in the drawer, closing it softly.  Then he took another gun from his opposite side, the Colt from the intruder, and put it in front of her, beside the coffee.  “If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you.”

Maxwell nodded.  It didn’t help.  

Jacobi must have seen that because after a long moment of silence he asked, “...You good?”

“I’m a monster,” she whispered.  

Jacobi said something she didn’t expect.  “Yeah, you are.”

She let out a sound, a bark; even she didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob.  The knot in her throat tightened painfully.  She put her face in her hands.  

Jacobi put his hand awkwardly on her shoulder, “Alana, look at me.” She obeyed, her vision blurry from crying.  He looked kind, understanding, even with the stain of blood on his t-shirt.  “You _are_ a monster, but so is Major Kepler.  So’s your supervisor.  So’s whoever works there,” he nodded towards the desk next to hers.  “And so am I.  It comes with the job.  But just because we do terrible things, just because we’re monsters, doesn’t mean it’s _easy_.”  

She let out a shuddering breath, “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you _can_ ,” he assured her.  “You can and you have to.  We don’t get a choice.”  He sat and let out a breath.  “If it helps…it gets easier.  After a while, it doesn’t hurt so much.”

“How many times have you done this, Daniel?”  Maxwell asked.  “How many people have you killed?”

Jacobi raised his eyebrows and gave her a mirthless smile.  “Jeez, I don’t know.  I’ve lost count.  I lost count a _loooong_ time ago.”  

“How do you deal with it?” she whispered.  

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he answered.  “Probably makes me worse but,” he shrugged, “it’s better without the pain.  Most of them…” he reconsidered, “a lot of them would do the same to you.  And if _they_ weren’t going to, there are people in Goddard Futuristics who would.” A pause, then he kept going, “Eventually it makes sense.”

“What does?” Maxwell asked.

He gestured vaguely around him.  “This place.  The rules.  The missions.  You start to understand why you’re a monster.  You go with it.  You embrace it.”

She was surprised. She didn’t think that was possible.  She laughed mirthlessly and incredulously.  “Bullshit,” she choked.

“I know you don’t believe me now, but you will.  In the end…in the end we get paid well, we get to see the world, we get to do what we want and nobody can stop us, and we get homes...friends…respect.  All things considered, being a monster isn’t so bad.”

A pause as Maxwell considered what he said.  Then slowly she nodded.  There were benefits to working for Goddard Futuristics, that was true.  No one here tried to stop her research.  No one here wanted her to appear before an ethics committee.  No one made sexist comments.  And she had Jacobi.  She picked up her coffee and took a sip.  Jacobi sat back, watching her, waiting for her.  The weight of what she had done still hurt, but the promise that this pain would go away was reassuring, “Daniel?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The mole was found the very next day.  She didn’t report it, but Jacobi must have.  Maxwell only knew because one of her coworkers disappeared without a trace.  His name was removed from anything he’d ever worked on.  No one knew about the break-in and Maxwell and Jacobi were sworn to secrecy by Mr. Cutter himself.  Maxwell was also instructed to go into Eunomia’s memory banks to remove all data records of the mole and alter her memories of the night in question.  As far as the AI knew, nothing unusual had happened and the missing doctor never existed at all.  

And Jacobi had been right.  It did get easier.  It got _easy_.  Sometimes she still felt the sting of guilt, and once, Jacobi did, too. Both of those things, the fact that it got easier to be a monster and that even Jacobi sometimes still felt that stab, were reassuring.  And she embraced being a monster, just like Jacobi had.  

It was just one of the dozens of times Jacobi had been there for her.  One of the dozens of times he proved he was her closest, dearest friend.  The best friend she could ever have.  

She would prove the same to him, no matter what.

 

***

 

Upon leaving Kepler the morning after the Teel mission, Maxwell went immediately to the lab.  She didn’t plan on leaving for a long time to come.  If anyone wanted her out, they would have to drag her away kicking, screaming, and, almost definitely, biting.  

When Maxwell stormed in, her coworkers looked up from their stations in alarm.  A few peeked out from their laboratories as she rushed down the hall.  Maxwell’s furious moods were not unheard of, not even rare, but they did cause drama and interest.

Maxwell tore into the large central lab where many of her coworkers were gathered around a table, looking over one of their latest projects.  Maxwell didn’t know or care which is was.   “Dr. Maxwell?” asked one, Dr. Nicholas Appleton, doing a literal double-take.  He pushed his safety goggles up his face as if to make sure he was actually seeing what he thought he was.

Maxwell glared at him, said nothing, and grabbed her toolbox from her desk.  It was a huge, heavy case that required two hands to even lift.  Maxwell left the main lab for one of the smaller rooms off the main hall.  “Out!” she said to the sole scientist who had been working inside, and the man scampered out, clutching his computer to his chest.  More of Maxwell’s coworkers were watching her when she came back into the main room, distracted from their demonstration.  

“Really, Dr. Maxwell, are you—?” Dr. Charity Kwan began.

“Not now,” Maxwell stopped her and grabbed a plasma cutter and welding mask off one of the shelves.  The group of scientists watched her as she moved around the room, left, then returned for more supplies.   

On the third reentry, this time with a flatbed trolley, her supervisor, Dr. Lisa Zimmerman, said firmly, “You need to tell me what’s going on here.”

“No, I don’t,” Maxwell snapped.

“I was told your mission went wrong.”

Maxwell didn’t respond, she began gathering up raw materials, consulting her smartphone as if she were reading a grocery list.  Zimmerman blocked Maxwell from leaving with the trolley stacked with titanium, carbon fiber, tubing, and a number of other materials, “We didn’t know if you were even coming back.”

“I came back,” Maxwell said levelly, glowering up at her.  She pressed forward and Zimmerman leapt out of the way to avoid being run over.  “And I’m very, _very_ busy.”

No one bothered her when she came to gather up the rest of her supplies.  As she set up her new workstation in the smaller isolated laboratory, Maxwell called, “Eunomia?” without looking up.  

“Yes, Dr. Maxwell?” asked the AI nervously, “are you alright?”

“Fine, but I need your help.  A lot of it,” Maxwell said.  A few jabs at her smartphone’s screen and Maxwell exported her sand-sketch photo gallery to the lab network, blocked to everyone but her, but available on any computer throughout the wing.  “Put images 1-16 on screen A,” Maxwell instructed Eunomia.  

“Right away, Dr. Maxwell,” she replied.  “What are these?”

“Important,” Maxwell said.  A huge, high monitor on the far wall hummed to life. Her sand-sketches appeared.  “Screen B, please,” she said.  Another monitor, this one on the left hand side of her workstation, lit up.  “I need you to find me images of the interiors of human forearms.  Right forearms, wrists, hands, and elbows.  I want every medical image you can access, every autopsy, every surgery, every time an idiot accidentally tore his arm open on a damn skateboard.”

“Uh...yes, Dr. Maxwell,” Eunomia responded in confusion.  

“I’m not done.  There are parameters,” she added.

“Oh, good!  I was really worried my servers wouldn’t be able to handle it,” sighed Eunomia.  It was true; Goddard Futuristics could access whatever they wanted on whomever they wanted.  

“Subjects must be male, between the ages of 27 and 35, preferably early 30s.  Subjects must be American and of Ashkenazi Jewish and/or East Asian descent, preferably Korean.  Get me healthy limbs of men of average weight. It can include the arm above the elbow, but it _must_ focus on the elbow, forearm, wrist, and hand.  I want the best images and videos available.  Maximum of four at a time.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course,” the AI answered.  

“I want automatic and manual control of the images.”

“Yes, Dr. Maxwell.  Can I ask what all these are for?”

“I’m building an artificial human arm and I need to do it before anyone finds me.”

“What?!  Why?  We have a whole medical division that—”

“That is evidently staffed by idiots!  I’m doing this myself!  Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in.  If they do…” she was scrolling through the photos of her schematics, quickly double-checking her math as she went.  She trailed off.

“If they do...do what?” Eunomia asked nervously.

“Grab them,” Maxwell indicated one of the two tactile claws dangling from a network of tracks and wires that allowed her to zip around the laboratory and reach any one of the workstations.  She had two per room.  “Knock them unconscious!  Throw them out of the room!  I don’t care!  Do whatever you have to do to make them leave!”  

“Oh...kay...I’ll do my best?” Eunomia said carefully, “Why is this so important?”

“It’s for a friend,” Maxwell answered.

“Did something happen to Mr. Jacobi?” Eunomia sounded shocked.

“Yes,” Maxwell wasn’t surprised Eunomia knew who she was talking about.  She and Jacobi spent hours together.  The combination of “friend” and “Maxwell” probably always brought Jacobi to mind.  

“What—?”

“Eunomia, I don’t have the time or the patience to tell you everything right now.  There was an accident on our mission.  He got hurt.  Badly.  They had to...to amputate his arm.”  Maxwell didn’t look away from her smartphone, but for a moment the memory of Daniel’s prone form lying in the sand overwhelmed her vision.  She added, “I’m going to save him.”  Maxwell chose an image, the largest overview of her plan, and selected it with a double tap of her fingers so it was displayed on the monitor above her.  “Let’s get started.”

 

***

 

A few hours had passed since Maxwell started her project.   She didn’t her lunch break or any of her coffee breaks.  She didn’t even leave her workstation unless she had to grab necessary parts or tools she forgot during those initial trips.  She kept her materials in a dragon’s hoard on her workstation.  She hadn’t spoken to any of her coworkers besides Eunomia and she wouldn’t have even done _that_ if she didn’t need the AI’s help.  

She wasn’t expecting anyone to bother her.  As of yet, no one even tried to, probably because they knew how useless it would be to attempt it.  Maxwell’s long held habit of ignoring intruders meant that the other scientists in her department tended to avoid her when she was busy.  

“Screen B, give me a thumb.  Muscles and tendons.  Focus flexor retinaculum and abductor pollicis brevis,” Maxwell said to Eunomia.  Instantly the images on Screen B changed.  Pictures of dissected limbs and digits scrolled by too quickly for Maxwell to properly register before it settled on four, each taking a quarter of the screen: an illustration (figure 426, Gray H. _Anatomy of a Human Body_. 20th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Lea  & Febiger; 1918.), a photo of a corpse’s hand with the skin peeled away as if it were wearing a whitish glove (Case No.: 2011-334; Name: Kim, Seong; Age: 32; Race: Asian; Sex: M; Cause & Manner of Death: Gunshot wound to the right temporal lobe/homicide;  Medical Examiner: Dr. Albert Robbins), a link to a video of Mr. Kim’s autopsy, and a link to a surgical video showing the repair of thumb muscle (Mount Sinai Hospital, The Aufses Division of General Surgery; Name: Steinberg, Nathaniel Age: 30; Date: 5/8/12; Time: 1:25 PM; Pre-op Diagnosis: RSI of 1st dorsal interosseous; Post-op Diagnosis: "; Surgeon: C. Turk).  

“Retain images 2 and 3.  Find me a higher-res video of the thumb flexing,” Maxwell said.  Two vanished, the photograph of the autopsy and surgery video remained and another video appeared, each taking a third of the screen.  “Play the videos, keep them repeating, no sound. Image 2, magnify point G.  Screen A, select sketch 2, points E1 through E5” she added, looking up at the other screen.  Sketch two was her schematic of the robotic musculature of the hand, the points indicated were along the thumb.  Eunomia obeyed, zooming in.  The photo took less than a second to render, but it felt like a lifetime to Maxwell.  She sighed and examined the pieces and tools she had in front of her on the desktop.  

“Dr. Maxwell, maybe you should take a break and wait to see what happens,” said Eunomia carefully.  “This course of action doesn’t seem...wise.”  

Maxwell had, over the course of the process, slowly filled Eunomia in on the details of what happened in Colombia.  Eunomia had come to the conclusion on her own that Maxwell was working so quickly and fiercely because she hadn’t yet gotten approval for the project, a detail Maxwell had explicitly left out.  

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Maxwell said, picking up her tools.

“But—”

“I’m not waiting!  I’m not stopping!” she shouted.  She took a deep breath and said more calmly, “Hold this, please.” She indicated the wrist she had been working on.  

Eunomia used her suspended claw to hold the delicate carpus Maxwell indicated. “Alright,” the AI sighed, “but I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You made that abundantly clear,” Maxwell spat, looking through her mounted magnifying glass at one of the five bases on which she was building Jacobi’s fingers “and I’m going to continue to ignore you.”  She was carefully, carefully bonding the metallic and carbon tendons and muscle to the joints of the thumb, building upward.  It was intricate and time consuming to ensure they connected correctly.   

Maxwell was so hyper-focused she didn’t hear the door open behind her.  She wouldn’t have noticed if an H-bomb went off.  “Dr. Maxwell,” Eunomia began.

“Not now,” Maxwell said through her teeth.  

Eunomia tried to get Maxwell’s attention again once their visitor came to a stop behind the scientist.  “I’m very sorry to interrupt, Dr. Maxwell but—” Eunomia said, but Maxwell silenced her with a quick “shh!” without looking away from her work. The AI tried again, “—but we have a visitor.  You should probably greet him and—”

“I gave you explicit instructions not to let anyone in here!” Maxwell snapped.   

“Well, that’s not too friendly, Maxwell,” came Kepler's voice from behind her.  

Maxwell was so surprised she nearly dropped her resin and tweezer.  “Eunomia!” she hissed accusingly.

“Major Kepler has a higher security clearance than you do.  He outranks you, Dr. Maxwell.  You cannot lock him out.  I’m sorry,” the AI said innocently.  

“No, you aren’t,” Maxwell said through her teeth.  

“Major Kepler _outranks_ you,” Eunomia said again as if this was a valid excuse.  Maxwell knew that Goddard only kept its most obedient AIs to run their labs and security systems; unflappable, incorruptible guard dogs to watch over their human employees.  They didn’t _want_ to rebel.  Eunomia was not exempt; indeed, Maxwell often found her exceptionally willing to kowtow.  When it came to apple-polishing, she was worse than Jacobi around Kepler.  Eunomia often made him look downright rebellious.  

“For someone without a nose you’ve got a really brown one,” Maxwell spat at the AI’s optic sensor.  

“It’s nothing personal, Dr. Maxwell, but I’m not going to bend the rules for you or anyone else,” Eunomia explained pompously, “My programming and my respect for my superiors prevents me from—”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now!” Maxwell growled.  “Turn off your speakers into this room before I do it for you.”

“Fine,” Eunomia said in a superior tone, “Have it your way.” There was an audible click.  Maxwell knew she couldn’t stop Eunomia from watching, and she would need her once Maxwell got back to work, but they didn’t have to talk.  Eunomia would still help Maxwell since she was a Goddard Futuristics employee arguably doing company business.  The AI’s job, in addition to running the mechanical functions of the lab, was to assist the employees however they needed it, so long as it was for Goddard Futuristics.  She could, and _would,_ abandon Maxwell if she, Maxwell, was expressly forbidden from continuing work on Jacobi’s arm.  Then Maxwell would be on her own.  It would be harder, but not impossible.  She would have only her notes and memory to work from.  If, of course, Eunomia didn’t sabotage her completely by ratting her out.  

The argument with Eunomia concluded, Maxwell rounded on Kepler, “What did you do to Jacobi?”

Kepler had waited patiently through Maxwell and Eunomia’s fight, stationary aside from his left pointer finger, which he tapped impatiently on his leg.  He barely stirred when she faced him, one eyebrow raised, visibly unimpressed by her anger. “Recently?  Nothing.  Last time I saw Jacobi was when you saw me with him.” He chuckled as he continued, “Unless you’re accusing me of telepathically killing him, I think I’m off the hook.”

“I’m not accusing you of telepathically killing him.  I _am_ accusing you of signing his death warrant,” she said, stomping towards him.  “And now what?  Are you here spying on me for Cutter to make sure I don’t make Jacobi a prosthesis?”

“Mr. Cutter doesn’t want to do anything to Jacobi he doesn’t have to do,” Kepler explained.

“What did he ‘have to do?’” Maxwell asked.  A knot formed in her throat as if to prevent her from asking.  Her anger was tempered by fear and her assault on Kepler paused.  

“Nothing, yet,” Kepler said.  Maxwell let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.  “Mr. Cutter is very interested in seeing what you can cook up.  But he has put a time limit on this.  He doesn’t want it distracting you, or Eunomia here, indefinitely.”

“Don’t worry about me, Major Kepler, sir!  I am literally incapable of being distracted,” Eunomia assured him.  

“What’s the time limit?” Maxwell asked Kepler, speaking over the AI.  Eunomia sighed and her speakers again clicked off.

“You have 72 hours,” Kepler instructed her.

“To build a working prototype?!” Maxwell asked incredulously.

“Yes ma’am,” said Kepler.  

“That’s insane!”

Kepler shrugged as if that was neither here nor there.  “For Jacobi’s sake, don’t screw this up.”

“I _won’t_ , Major,” said Maxwell icily, emphasizing every letter.  

Kepler didn’t leave.  He skirted around the table, past Eunomia’s unused claw. Eunomia did not grab him by the collar and yank him back as Maxwell and she had earlier discussed.  Maxwell glared at her optic sensor and the camera quickly turned away as if Eunomia was suddenly very interested by something on the opposite side of the room.

“Let me see what you’re working on,” said Kepler, rubbing his hands together.

Maxwell looked down at the parts she had on the table.  Metal and carbon fiber pieces, most not even correctly shaped.  Molds and models.  The joints of skeletal fingers.  Several pieces of wrist.  Dozens of differently sized wires.  Epoxy resin.  A soldering torch.  Socket wrench.  A pocket knife.  Microchips.  Cords of robotic muscle, thick and thin, weighty and sinewy.  Stacks of sensors, some smaller than a centimeter. “It isn’t done,” she said defensively, looking up into Kepler’s face.

“I can see that. Tell me how it’s going to work,” Kepler said.  

“I don’t have time for this,” she muttered, returning to work.  She had just picked up her tweezers and epoxy resin when Kepler slammed the table with the flats of both his hands.  The entire workstation shook. Maxwell jumped back and gasped, actually dropping her tools in her shock.  

 _“Dammit, Maxwell!”_ Kepler expelled loudly.  It was perhaps the fiercest he had ever sounded and Maxwell was forcibly reminded of the tiger’s enraged roar.  It brought goosebumps to her skin.  “I don’t know if you think this is a _game_ you’re playing, but Mr. _Cutter_ sure as Hell doesn’t!  This is Goddard’s lab! Goddard’s time! Goddard’s resources!  Mr. Cutter can take all this away from you — and I absolutely mean _all_ of it — before you can even blink!  He’ll take away more than that, and not a damn soul will be able to save you!  Not a damn soul will _try!_ If you want this stunt of yours to work, you have to _cooperate_!”  

“You don’t think I know that?!”  Maxwell snapped.  Her look of surprise and fear became something colder and angrier.  

Kepler answered, “You want to know what I think?  I think you’re used to ignoring orders!  I think you want to do this _your_ way because that’s how you’ve always done everything!  And I _know_ you don’t yet realize what happens when you pull that crap with Goddard Futuristics!  You don’t realize how utterly Mr. Cutter can — and _will_ — annihilate you!  If you screw this up, if you miss the deadline by a _microsecond_ , if this arm doesn’t work, if you push Mr. Cutter even just a goddamn _inch…_ you...are a...dead woman!” he said each word with extra emphasis before continuing.  He spoke slowly now, as if to make sure she understood him, but his tone was no less ferocious, “He will take you down, piece-by-piece, limb-by-limb, brutally, bloodily, and publicly!  Show them all what happens when someone fails him!  And he’ll _enjoy every second of it!_ I’ve seen it, Maxwell, I have seen it with my own two eyes!”  When he said those words something closed behind those blue eyes.  If Maxwell didn’t know better she’d have thought Kepler was afraid.  His voice became violent enough that it seemed to shake the room, “And it won’t just be _your_ sorry, useless, smug, insubordinate ass that gets hanged!  You will take Jacobi out with you!”

“You don’t think I am doing every-damn-thing in my power to save Jacobi?!”  She yelled, just as loud, but shriller than Kepler,  “I am not doing _anything_ to jeopardize his chances!”

“To borrow your phrase: bullshit!” Kepler growled. He was leaning across the table, dangerously close.  

 _“I would die for that man!”_ Maxwell shouted back, feeling a knot form in her throat.  And when she said that, she realized just how much she meant it.  It wasn’t a sentiment someone in her position, in Kepler’s, in Jacobi’s, could take lightly.  They’d seen and caused too much death to be casual with such statements.  Never in her life had she ever felt that way before.  And the fact that she meant it startled even her. A ringing pause fell over them for a moment.  Kepler straightened, staring at her in disbelief.  She looked away, unable to meet his eyes.  

“Just make sure he doesn’t die for you,” Kepler said after a moment, “Do not make saving _your_ life the _last_ mistake he ever makes.”

“Get out of my lab,” Maxwell annunciated, glaring hard at the Major.  

“Goddard Futuristics’ lab,” Kepler reminded her, turning to the door.  “I’ll be back.”

 

***

 

It took some time for Maxwell to calm her nerves.  She stopped working on that thin tendon for now, too afraid of accidentally cleaving or disarranging it and losing progress.  Instead, she moved on to bigger and less precise parts of the project.  She started sheering out the radial and ulnar structure, perhaps enjoying wielding the plasma cutter and air carbon arc torch more than she should have, taking out her rage on the raw materials rather than risking the smaller, delicate, necessary parts.  Then she put it in the mold.  The silence helped.  Eunomia kept her word and hadn’t spoken to Maxwell since their fight.  Eventually, Maxwell got back to the hand. She had just finished that section of muscle and started to solder nerve sensors to it when Kepler came back in, “Progress, Dr. Maxwell?”

Her anger spiked again, but she didn’t look away from her work.  “Why are you back?”

“I told you I would be,” he reminded her.  That arrogant calm was back; the friendly Major Kepler, veneer unchipped, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats the last time they saw each other, as if Jacobi’s life wasn’t on the line.  “Have you made any progress?”

She growled under her breath.  

“Dr. Maxwell?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard her, but his voice became slower and clearer as he went on, a threat, “I asked you a question.”

“Yes, _sir_ ,” she said, “I _have_ and I would make even more if you left.”  

“That’s terribly frank,” Kepler said, making no motion to leave.  Indeed, he very pointedly sat down on a stool, leaning casually back against the counter facing the far side of Maxwell’s workstation.  “You’ve got seventy hours left.”  He pulled an apple from the pocket of his jacket and buffed it on his shirt.

“I don’t need you here,” Maxwell assured him.

“That’s too bad, because you don’t get a choice.” Kepler punctuated his sentence by biting into the apple.  “What’re you working on?” he asked through a mouthful of fruit.  

Maxwell didn’t answer.

He swallowed.  “Max...well,” he said slowly, more threateningly, “what are you working on?”

“The thumb,” Maxwell said through her teeth.  She did not want a repeat of before.  “Each of these electrodes is a nerve ending. I’ll attach them to a wire acting as the median nerve.”

“What progress did you make while I was gone?”

“I finished securing the muscles and tendons of the thumb.  And I cut and started the shaping process of the radial/ulnar structure,” she answered.  

She was infinitely glad she’d taken those anatomy and physiology classes in college.  It had initially just been to fill a requirement, but she took more of them because she found them interesting.  She liked breaking down the human body into machine parts.  Programming.  Mechanics.  None of that philosophical or religious BS used by people to assure her of the innate value of human life.  

They tried to tell her all people were innately important, but AIs were not. This was something she could never believe.  Broken down to their simplest parts, humans and AIs were no different from each other.  Just two different kinds of machines.  Maxwell did not deal in absolutes when it came to worth.  Individuals – organic and inorganic – were to be judged case-by-case.  No one was innately worthy or innately worthless.  One kind of person wasn’t intrinsically better than another, and her anatomy classes assured her of that fact.  Now they gave her enough background to build an arm for Jacobi.

“And where is it now?” he asked.  

“In the mold,” Maxwell answered in annoyance.  She pointed to the mold where carbon fiber was being melted down and reshaped.  Kepler rose and momentarily examined the red-hot machine.  He nodded approvingly, smugly, and took another very pointed bite of his apple.  He crossed back to his stool and sat down again.  Maxwell expected Kepler to be called away or have some other work to take care of.  He didn’t.  Kepler stayed.  

He flitted around the room watching her, making sure she never forgot the timer.  He might as well have been wearing a stopwatch.  She ignored him as best she could.  There was a lot to do, to build, to consider.  Force meters. Accelerometers. Biosensors to complete the bioelectric circuit of Jacobi’s nervous system so he could still feel, electrodes to implant in his musculature and galvanic dermal ones. A computerized controller to connect Jacobi’s brain to the artificial muscle. The artificial muscles themselves, robotic replacements for what had been cut away.  A joint to attach to what was left of his elbow.  She constantly consulted her notes and the medical images.  

She didn’t leave when Goddard Futuristics closed for the night.  She was shocked that Kepler didn’t make her.  When Dr. Zimmerman poked her head into the room (of course Eunomia unlocked the door), Kepler sent Maxwell’s supervisor away with just a shake of his head and a flick of his wrist, a “keep moving” gesture that the doctor did not need repeated.  She left without saying a word to either of them.  After the entirety of the lab emptied out, Kepler, himself, left, saying simply, “Goodnight, Maxwell.  Sixty-eight hours left. See you in the morning.”  

She knew he would keep that promise.  And he did.  He returned promptly at 9 a.m. saying, “I got you a bagel, Maxwell.  I wasn’t sure what kind you like, so I just got you a plain and one of those little orange juices.  Fifty-four hours left.  What’re you working on now?”

“Musculature,” Maxwell answered briefly, her voice was slightly croaky from a long silent night.  

“Which ones?”

“Forearm.  The equivalent of the extensor digitorum,” she said.   

“Let’s see,” and he stared over her shoulder.  He also deposited the bag containing her breakfast on the table.  Maxwell didn’t touch it.  

Kepler didn’t leave at all that day.  Hours passed.  Kepler made sure she knew that.

“Don’t you have work to do, Major?” asked Maxwell coldly.

“Just paper work.  I’ve been doing it here,” Kepler said.  Maxwell looked up and saw Kepler’s huge form folded over the counter.  His extremely pretentious and expensive-looking watch was sitting beside his collection of manilla folders stamped with bright red _TOP SECRET_ s and jet black _CLASSIFIEDs_ .  He used a monogrammed gold-nibbed fountain pen to sign various papers.  Occasionally he took a break from his signatures to work on one of the longer documents he had open in front of him.  He had set up his own little assembly line of paperwork. Documents-in-progress in the center. A touch screen standing upright in the upper left corner, which he consulted whenever there was a _ping_ indicating he had received an e-mail.  Full folders to the left.  Papers needing his signature above.  Empty folders, the pen cap and case, a thick sharpie marker for redacting material, and a small box of binder clips to the right.  As each document was finished, he flicked the papers into a folder, stamped it, and changed the pile it was in.  So damn neat.  “Everything is under control, but thanks for your concern.  Fifty hours left, doctor.”

“Fine,” Maxwell said irritably.

There was a pause.  Kepler audibly capped his pen, then, as if to punish her, said, “Have I ever told you about the time I ended up helping a team of cryptozoologists hunt a yeti in Nepal?” His tone was warm, chuckling, but when Maxwell glanced up again there was a vaguely malicious look in his gaze.

Maxwell looked away and didn’t answer.  She didn’t know how Jacobi could stand Kepler’s stories. Jacobi didn’t try to tune them out, but Maxwell thought that was just because of his habit of trying to please Kepler at all costs.  

“Have I?” he pressed his tone more dangerous.

“No, Major,” she growled.  Was this a joke to him?  Some kind of sport? Was he enjoying trying to sabotage her?  What could he possibly hope to get out of this?  What was his plan?  What was Cutter’s?  

“Well,” he began, “I had just left my funk band and was doing a little soul searching…” Maxwell very pointedly returned her attention to her project.  He wouldn’t win.  Whatever he was planning, he wouldn’t win.  Eventually he came to the final sentence: “Long story short, the yeti or whatever it _really_ was, stayed at the monastery and last I heard he became a lama.  Forty-eight hours, now.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the last episode...I think we all need this. I'm going back to denial land now and no one can stop me. :(


	7. Coup de Main

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coup de Main  
> Noun.  Tactic.  
> A fast attack that relies on surprise to accomplish its objectives in a single blow.

 

Kepler didn’t leave Maxwell alone.  Indeed, if anything, he became more goading as time wore on.  Increasingly insistent.  Colder.  Less friendly.  Less chit-chat.  Each update became more and more like a warning, like a _threat_.  

It was like watching one of his usual temper-tantrums in slow motion.  In general his mood would change suddenly; a _boom!_  then a downpour, like a summer thunderstorm.  Now it was gradual, cold, suffocating, like smothering winter snow.  The change in his behavior pattern was extremely unnerving.  Maxwell spent the afternoon waiting for the guillotine blade to drop.  It never did.  

She _knew_ he was trying to shake her.  But what she didn’t know and couldn’t work out was why he was trying so hard to sabotage her.  It was driving her _insane_.

Why did Kepler want Jacobi dead?  What had Jacobi ever done to him?  Daniel Jacobi had never been anything but unflinchingly, unquestioningly loyal to Warren Kepler, even to his own detriment.  He _trusted_ and _respected_ this piece of garbage and Kepler was _gleefully_ stabbing him in the back.  Was it to get back at _her?_ Was seeing her failure and destruction worth sacrificing Jacobi?  Was Kepler so petty that Maxwell’s arguing with him had been enough to doom Jacobi out of spite?  Was he so proud that he didn’t want to her to be right, even at the cost of and Jacobi — and herself?  

“Nineteen hours,” was Kepler’s farewell that last night.  

She didn’t answer the Major.  She didn’t even turn to look at him.  She heard the door close and lock behind him.  

_Nineteen hours._

She had less than a day now.

Less than a day.  

She looked back down at her handiwork.  Her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t hold her tools straight.   

_Less than a day!_

Less than a day to finish a perfect human arm.  

And if she couldn’t?  If she went to 2:01 p.m. rather than the deadline of 2:00?  Then she and Jacobi would both die.  They would die more horribly and more completely than anyone ever had outside of the likes of a nuclear explosion.  Deleted.  Erased.  Just like that mole had been.  They would utterly and completely cease to exist, not even a memory, not even a shadow.  Not just Alana Maxwell but Daniel Jacobi as well.  

“Dammit!” Maxwell said aloud, practically throwing her tools down.  Her breathing was ragged.  She gripped the edge of the table for support.  She put her head on the workstation, crumpling under the weight of the situation.  She let out a shaking breath.  How could she hope to do this?  

 _“No!”_ she thought angrily at herself, _“Don’t do this, Alana!  Don’t you_ dare _do this!  You haven’t lost yet!  Don’t even think about giving Kepler and Cutter the satisfaction of seeing you screw up!  Don’t let them win! ”_   

Similar thoughts had gotten her through other difficult dilemmas in the past.  All her life there was invariably someone who wanted nothing more than to see her to fail.  And she was always just as glad to prove them wrong.  In the past it had been her family, the male students from her school days, her coworkers, her chicken-shit employers before Goddard Futuristics.  It didn’t matter who it was, someone was _always_ standing in her way.  And when they did Alana Maxwell dialed it up to 11.  She proved them wrong.  She defeated them.  Destroyed them.  She _won_ .   This wouldn’t be any different.  She wouldn’t think about what would happen if she failed, because she _wouldn’t_ fail.

 _“You have to do this.  You have to do this for Daniel.  He needs you!  Don’t even_ think _about letting him down!”_   She lifted her head from the tabletop.  She wouldn’t lose.  She wouldn’t fall, not only to get back at Kepler, but because if she did Daniel would fall too. She wouldn’t let him die, not as long as she could help it.  Jacobi was a survivor.  He nearly blew himself sky-high when he was 22, but he lived.  He managed to avoid an orbital ballistics missile when two co-workers hadn’t been so lucky.  He made it through dozens of dangerous missions for Goddard Futuristics.  He lived through that night in the jungle.  He would make it through _this_.  She would make sure of it.  

And she knew that if Daniel were here in her place and she was the one in trouble he’d be just as smart as he had to be for her, and she would do the same for him.   

Maxwell stepped away from her workstation for a moment.  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, calming her heartbeat.  She pulled off her latex gloves. She put a plastic coffee pod into the Keurig and watched the liquid fill the paper cup.  She slid off her shoes and socks to soothe her aching feet.  She knew it wouldn’t really do much, she had been standing for roughly fifty hours and taking off her shoes wouldn’t reduce the blisters, but the cool tile under her toes felt good.  She drank most of her coffee as soon as it filled, not even bothering to add her usual half-and-half.  She squirted some Purell on her hands.  Maxwell crossed to the emergency eyewash and splashed water on her face.  She dried her face on her lab coat, slapped on a clean pair of latex gloves, and returned to her work.  

She looked at everything on the table.  It had taken shape substantially and the brief pause allowed her to come back to it with fresh eyes.  What once had been just a collection of metal, carbon, silicon, and plastic now looked distinctly human.  There were really only two steps left.  One was the casing over the arm that she would attach to the makeshift nervous system she had built — essentially, Jacobi’s new skin. The other was the part that was worrying her most, the implants to attach Jacobi’s human tissue.  There was a titanium peg that would fit in his bone and connect into the circuitry of the prosthesis and the sensors that would go under his skin.  It was the port at which two different machines met.  The marriage of technology and biology.

 “Screen B, sketch 6,” she said, looking up.  The drawing of the bone implant and wired sensors appeared.  Deep breath.  She could do this.  She had to do this.  “Pick up the titanium round, please,” Maxwell instructed the AI.  Eunomia’s claw silently obeyed, hauling up the heavy rod.  Maxwell pulled down her welding mask, slid in her earplugs, and picked up her arc cutter.

Enough stalling.  

She only had nineteen hours left and she was damn sure going to make them count.

 

***

 

“Nine hours,” was all Kepler said when he arrived.  He was even earlier than he had the day before.  The lab Maxwell was held up in had no windows, but she didn’t think anyone else was in the building yet.  Everything was still silent and still.  Beyond the frosted glass of the laboratory’s door the hallway lights were still off.  He hadn’t brought her a bagel this time.  He did bring her coffee, however, and he silently placed the cup beside her.  “Tired?” he asked.

“No,” Maxwell lied.  She hadn’t allowed herself to feel tired since that near-breakdown at the nineteen-hour mark.  She hadn’t even looked away since then.  But her body was starting to feel heavy and she worried the last three days were beginning to weigh on her.  Kepler’s saying it made her fatigue worse.  But she wouldn’t let him know that.  That was what he wanted. She picked up the coffee and downed it almost in one gulp.  She was close now, too close to the finish line to trip.

The implant was functional.  She hoped.  It would be surgically inserted inside Jacobi’s humerus and would clip into a hollowed end of the artificial humerus.  Subdermal sensors were to be inserted into the bicep and bonded to the ends of the median, radial, and ulnar nerves.  If she was right, there wouldn’t be a need to update _that_ technology. It was already perfect. He wouldn’t have to endure another surgery after this one.  If she was wrong… if she was wrong it wouldn’t matter, because both she and Jacobi would be dead.  

The timer had been torturing her.  She felt every minute pass deep in her gut.  She had no idea what time it really was.  Other than Kepler’s countdown, she had lost track of time — the actual time, even the concept of time, she didn’t even know if it was day or night.  But she knew that it was hour ten.  They were nearly in the single digits.  

Kepler sat by the counter but didn’t take out any of his work or even open his sleek leather briefcase.  He spent the time divided evenly between looking at his watch and staring at her.  She felt his eyes on her whenever he directed his gaze her way.  He gave her updates by the quarter hour.   But aside from that he didn’t say a word.  Maxwell had never been more tense in her life.  She felt like a frayed rope, moments from snapping under the weight.   _Nine forty-five._   _Nine and a half.  Nine and fifteen.   Nine.  Eight and forty-five.  Eight and thirty.  Eight and a quarter.  Eight.  Seven forty-five.  Seven and a half._

He had just announced seven hours and thirty minutes when she realized it was as complete as it would get without risking the clock.  The realization hit her like a splash of cold water.  “Done!” she shouted more loudly than she intended.  

“Done” was relative.  There would need to be updates to the arm itself.  It wasn’t perfect. The black, corded muscles exposed at the elbow, which she didn’t like.  The entirety of the exoskin wasn’t as sensitive as it should have been, and although the percentage difference between it and real skin was minuscule, so minuscule it was nearly undetectable, it wasn’t good enough for Maxwell.  The whole arm was too thin, there wasn’t enough to bulk it out because the robotic pieces were smaller and thinner than the organic ones.  She needed to find some way to fix that.  The thumb sometimes clicked, but she was afraid to take it apart to see what was wrong.  She was afraid of losing any progress, especially before surgery.  She couldn’t take any risks once Jacobi was on the table, she would need all the time she could get in the OR.  She might be able to fix the thumb in a few minutes, but she might need those few minutes in Jacobi’s bicep.

If it worked, it would react, feel, and move just like a human arm, regardless of appearances.  Under normal circumstances, she never would have been happy with this as a finished product and she had to keep reminding herself she could come back to it.  Kepler had made her inescapably aware of her timer and Jacobi could stand to be a little uncomfortable for perhaps a few days rather than dead because Maxwell had stalled.

“Done?!” Kepler repeated.  

“I just need to run a few tests,” Maxwell said, she felt herself shaking.  Now came the moment of truth.  Time to see if it even worked or if she had failed Jacobi in the worst way imaginable.  

“You have seven hours and twenty-eight minutes before Mr. Cutter’s deadline.  Can you run your tests and get this on Jacobi in that time?”

“Yes,” Maxwell said, hoping she was right.  “They won’t take long.”   _If_ the tests were successful.  

She crossed to the counter and kicked a stepping stool into place.  From the top step she was able to reach the cabinets above.  She retrieved a 6-volt lantern battery and a few metal wires with an alligator clip on each end.   She attached an alligator clip onto the anode and cathode, clipped the others onto the first wire, then connected the opposite ends to the four sub-dermal implants and muscles.  The arm tensed.  She poked the palm with the eraser end of a pencil.  The fingers twitched and flexed from the stimulus.  She jabbed the radial collateral ligament and the elbow bent.  She twisted the wrist, satisfied with the movement.  With her hand she could easily guide the arm through all the gestures and motions she could think of.  Jacobi would be back to flipping people off in traffic in no time.  

Maxwell disconnected the alligator clips.  Her hands were shaking again, this time it was not with fear, but with relief.  She was almost laughing with it.  She did it!  

“Hm, yeah, it’ll do,” said Kepler, quietly.  She hadn’t even heard him approach the table.  

“Excuse me?” Maxwell snapped, pausing in the process of winding the wires.  

“I _said_...‘It’ll do,’” Kepler said more loudly and slowly.

After three days of Kepler breathing down her neck Maxwell had had enough.  Her frayed nerves snapped.  Her anger was now fully freed.  He was lucky she didn’t just shriek.  They were both lucky she didn’t try to punch him.   She tossed the wires onto the floor and glared up into Kepler’s face.  

“That...is... _it!”_ she shouted.  “I am _tired_ of you breaking in here to undermine me and my work, Major! I am trying to save a man’s life!  A man who works for you!  Who you supposedly _like_ ! Who _respects_ you!  Who _trusts_ you!  Who would do _anything_ for you!  He might just be a glass of scotch to you, but Daniel Jacobi is my best friend!  I am trying to keep him alive and you’ve done _everything_ in your power to sabotage me!”  She came around the table, storming towards him, one hand clenched into a fist, the other pointed accusingly at him.  She thought she might actually kill him or he might kill her.  Either way, she didn’t think they would both be able to leave this room alive.

“Have I?” Kepler asked, smiling innocently.  

 _“Yes!”_ she snapped, “You won’t leave me alone!  You stare over my shoulder!  You keep counting down!  You keep judging my work and—!” Maxwell froze.

It all clicked into place.  

And he’d kept anyone else from bothering her.  By staying in her lab he made sure she was constantly working.  By asking her questions he made her gauge her own progress.  Giving her a countdown kept her from her usual habit of getting carried away in perfecting details.  He brought her food and coffee so she didn’t have to stop to get them herself.  He annoyed and bullied her into obedience.  It was the same way he’d gotten her to work for him.  He made sure the thing he wanted was completely inescapable.  And in this instance the thing he wanted was the same thing _she_ wanted.  

Kepler still looked calm and confident.  Maxwell stood with her mouth open.  She slowly lowered her accusing finger.  Her hand dropped to her side while Kepler’s smile became a smirk. “…And you weren’t trying to sabotage me at all,” she muttered.  

“I don’t know what made you think I was,” Kepler said.

“Mr. Cutter doesn’t want us ‘wasting’ resources,” Maxwell said dumbly.  

“I am not Mr. Cutter,” Kepler reminded her.  

“But you’re his employee.”

“So are you and so is Mr. Jacobi.”

“You don’t think this,” she gestured to the arm on the table, “is a waste of resources.”

“I would if I didn’t think you could do it. But I had and have the utmost faith in both your abilities and your dedication to Mr. Jacobi.”

“And yours?”

Kepler sighed, “A lot of people accuse me of playing favorites.  Maybe I do. When I found Mr. Jacobi, well, the whole world had just about given up on him.  At first I didn’t know what Goddard Futuristics could get out of this sad husk of a man.  I saw what everyone else did, a broken drunk barely able to stand on his own two feet. But I was wrong.  He has more than proven himself to me over the past few years.  I like a man who can do what it takes. I like a man who is loyal and understands his obligations.  I like a man with promise. Who can be something.  I like _Daniel Jacobi_ and it would be a damned shame to lose him. I am not going to disrespect Mr. Cutter’s authority and for your own sake, Maxwell, I recommend you do the same.  Don’t push your luck.   But I was not going to lose Jacobi without trying to save him.”  

“So you’ve been here pushing your luck we _me_ instead,” Maxwell said.  The less dangerous option.  

“I think I’ve done a bang up job there. Kept you from getting in too deep.  Kept you on the timer. And now,” he tapped the arm. “Now we’ve got this.  And it works.”

“Is that a question or a statement?” Maxwell asked.

“A statement, doctor, a statement,” he held up his hands defensively.  

Maybe he _did_ care about them, or at the very least he cared enough about Jacobi to bend orders to save him.  He cared in the most Kepler way he could, from behind the scenes, having other people do the heavy lifting, and with his usual obnoxious smugness.  Suddenly Kepler seemed less dangerous.  Suddenly his actions seemed less sinister as if for a brief moment Maxwell could see behind the curtain.  And the look on his face…was he proud?  Did he care enough about her to feel pride?

“Although…I do have one question…” he said and there was a certain wickedness in his smirk.

She blinked, her train of thought thoroughly derailed, “And that is?”

“Do you have webbed toes?”

Maxwell stared at him for a moment before answering.  She hadn’t been expecting that.  She’d entirely forgotten that she took off her shoes and socks the night before.   He was right, the second and third toes on both feet were conjoined.  

“Is that really important right now?!” Maxwell snapped, embarrassed.  

“No, it isn’t,” Kepler laughed, “I just noticed, that’s all.”

She reddened.  

“Nothing to be ashamed about, just a little extra tissue,” Kepler told her.  “Do they help you swim?”

“No, sir,” Maxwell said, a mess of emotional fatigue.  “Why would they?”

“Well, they’re webbed like a du—” he stopped and his smile widened, sharpened slightly, “Has Jacobi ever said anything about them?”  

“What?  No. I don’t think so. I don’t remember,” Maxwell rubbed her face.  “Major, please stop.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” he said in mock surrender.  “Let’s get this thing to Jacobi, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Maxwell answered.  She wrapped the arm in bubble wrap. She didn’t say anything, but she glanced up at Kepler.  He was watching the process with an unreadable expression on his face.  When she was finished she taped the bubble wrap around the arm with two strips of scotch tape.  Maxwell pulled off her gloves and slipped her sneakers back on.  That was the last time Kepler would be allowed to see her bare feet.  Then she grabbed the package and looked down at it rather than Kepler’s face as she spoke. “I…didn’t think you actually cared about anyone,” she muttered.

Kepler let out an incredulous little chuckle, holding open the laboratory door for her.  “That’s a little low, don’t you think?  Maybe I foster kittens and help little old ladies cross the street.  I even have a sweet ol’ mother who I used to visit all the time before I joined up here.”  Kepler, like Maxwell, like Jacobi, like everyone else in the SI, was dead and gone to the rest of the world.  If Kepler had a mother, she thought she buried her son years ago.  

“I don’t believe any of that. You wouldn’t tell me if you did.”

“Maybe,” Kepler shrugged.

“Jacobi’s allergic to cats, if you had one he’d know.”

“Maybe,” Kepler repeated.  “Or maybe, unlike you and Mr. Jacobi, I can keep my clothes clean.”

Maxwell shook her head.  After another moment of quiet she decided she had to get this thought out, “I thought…I thought this was all just business to you.”

“You made that clear when you accused me of abandoning you and Mr. Jacobi in the jungle,” Kepler said walking beside her down the hall, keeping pace with her, not storming ahead for once.    

“What happened there?” Maxwell asked. 

“I had to get clearance from Mr. Cutter.   _He_ left you hanging.  I did my best.  I did _try_.  If it was up to me, we’d’ve been out there sooner.  And I wasn’t lying, it _does_ take some time to find a GPS signal in a jungle.”

Maxwell wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth.  Would he have betrayed Cutter’s orders if his boss had turned down Kepler’s request for a rescue?  Maxwell didn’t think so, but the fact that he made the decision to even _risk_ saving them made her feel a little less like chum.  Kepler was still smiling, still high above her physically, in rank, and in his own mind, but he was letting her speak freely and frankly without screaming at her.  It was shocking.  It threw everything she thought she knew about Kepler off balance, as if the picture she’d had of him was only half-developed.  

“What about The Whiskey Speech?” Maxwell asked.

“You keep bringing up The Whiskey Speech but you forget what it says.  Yes, I _could_ live without my scotch.  But I also _like_ it; I like it a lot.  I don’t want to get rid of it if I can help it. Just that I _can_ if I have to.  If it came down to it, yes, I would save myself before I would save you.  Don’t flatter yourself in thinking otherwise.”

“I never would, Major,” Maxwell assured him.

“But,” he went on, “I will do everything I can to ensure that I do not have to make that decision.  I’m not all bad, Maxwell, just pragmatic; you should understand that.  I think you are too.”  

This was an honesty she hadn’t been expecting.  It was oddly reassuring.  If he had said he hadn’t meant a word of his Speech, she wouldn’t have believed him.  She would have had perhaps as much disdain as before.  But now she was cautiously curious about her CO.  Was it respect that made him honest? Or disregard for her?  Was he impressed by what she had done?  Had that earned his trust?  Did he reach out to her out of their shared interest in Jacobi?  She stared up at him in silence for a few moments.   

“Anything else you want to add before we go?” Kepler asked, glancing down at her as they stepped out into the parking lot.  It was not yet dawn.  The weather was as close to cold as Florida ever got.  Maxwell’s used silver Jeep Wrangler and a spotless Shelby Cobra were the only two cars in the parking lot.  A few birds lazily sang.  But everything else was still and quiet, as if they were the only people in the world.  

“I’m not sure,” she said slowly.  “But I am sorry I thought you were trying to sabotage me.”

“Perhaps that means you’ll trust me in the future.”

“Maybe,” she answered.

“I’ll take that ‘maybe,’” Kepler said with a nod.  “That’s more than enough lollygagging, let’s get going.”

“Whose car should we take?” asked Maxwell

“No contest,” Kepler answered.   He pulled his keys from his pocket and gestured towards the bright red Cobra.  “Mine’s faster.”


	8. MAL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MAL  
> Phrase.  The International Code of Signals.  
> “MAL” indicates the transmitting vessel has a doctor on board.

 Sometimes it hurt.  

The pain wasn’t constant and it caught Jacobi off guard whenever it happened.  It was like someone grabbing him and slamming him into the ground, equally shocking and agonizing at once.  It sent his heart pounding in his chest.

It wasn’t the soreness from the operation itself, he wasn’t surprised by that. He had just had major surgery; it wasn’t going to feel good.  Nor was it the emotional sting, the constant ache of dysmorphia, and the blow to his pride that came with it. That hadn’t faded even if he tried to ignore it.  No, the pain that kept utterly destroying him was from the phantom limb.   

Jacobi would be trying desperately to find some semblance of normalcy when, suddenly, the lower arm he no longer had would throb, or an intense pain would shoot from his butchered elbow to the tips of his ghost fingers.  Sometimes it ached.  Sometimes it throbbed. Sometimes it felt as if someone was trying to pull his arm out of joint.  The worst was when it burned.  He knew burns too well.  Generally, he was pretty _okay_ with burns; they were part of his job, his hobby, his _life_.  But not this approximation.  These phantom burns were like the memories of his life before, the life he lost.  

When the pain struck he would grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes closed, mentally begging for it to stop.  

Every single damn time these phantom pains hit him, he fought himself on whether or not he should tell the doctors.  Was it safe to get help?  Or would they use it as an opportunity to poison him?  They already had him on a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers; if they wanted to poison him they already would have.  But there was always the chance that Jacobi’s complaining would be the thing that pushed Cutter to the pollice verso.  Then, fall Jacobi.  His next dose of Cefazolin might end up with a lot more Clorox in it.  

Paranoia made him try to wait the phantom attacks out, wait for the pain from the missing limb to subside.  Sometimes it would overwhelm him, blind him, smother him.  When it got that bad, when he couldn’t see the other side, that was when he’d take the risk and call for help.  Then a member of the staff would flood his veins with morphine.  So far he’d survived every single injection.  No bleach in his central venous catheter yet, but there was always tomorrow.

The worst of it, he thought, was when the phantom limb attacks _didn’t_ hurt.  When he would forget that his arm was _missing_ .  The hallucinated arm wouldn’t feel quite right, but it would still feel like it was _there._ Then he might find himself reaching with that grotesque stump as if the phantom arm were real.  And he would realize what he was doing, curse himself, the universe, and every tiger ever born.  

There hadn’t been any well-wishers in the last three days.  There hadn’t been much human contact at all.  In general, Jacobi was glad for it.  There was only one person he thought he could stomach seeing, and that was Maxwell.  But she hadn’t been there since he came to, probably because she was too busy saving his neck.  He was a little bitter, sometimes very bitter, that he hadn’t heard a word.  Complete radio silence.  He wished she would give him updates, but for all of his acerbity over her aloofness, he was unsurprised.  Maxwell was…intense in her dedication to her work.  He couldn’t complain in this case.  She was probably the only reason he was still alive.  

The only two people he saw regularly were Dr. Wong and Dr. Jones, the two physicians who checked in on him.  They never had much to say.  Jacobi only knew their names because of the ID badges displayed on their white coats.  Their visits were brief; they would come in, have a very terse conversation with him about how he felt, do a cursory examination, read his charts, scribble a few notes on them, and leave.  As soon as the doctor de jour left, Jacobi would grab the chart off the foot of the bed and try to read what had been written, but no matter how hard he tried he could only parse out pieces of the handwriting and code scribbled there.  

Jacobi didn’t ingratiate himself to the doctors.  When they asked him questions, his answers were characteristically snide.  It didn’t seem to bother either Wong or Jones.  They didn’t try to get to know him.   Jacobi wasn’t surprised by that fact.  After all, no one wants to know the man they’re about to kill.  Sometimes you had to, but given the choice, any sane person would opt to keep their distance, monster or not.  Jacobi knew they were waiting for instructions, to see if he was really their patient or their victim.  

Wong and Jones weren’t actively trying to cure him.  They were just making sure he didn’t drop dead from pain or infection before Cutter passed his judgement.  They weren’t helping him get better, they were just making sure he didn’t get worse; Doing No Harm, but not doing any good either.  Jacobi was in Limbo.

He knew he was expendable, but he hadn’t yet been expended.  It put him constantly on edge.  He knew he was on dangling by a thread; one misstep and he was dead.  But the problem was determining what a misstep was.  Cutter was even more of an enigma than Kepler.  Jacobi had learned the best way to ensure survival as Cutter’s employee was to follow orders no matter what.  Unfortunately, this time he had no orders and he himself was the cause for concern.  So he remained in stasis.  The only thing changing was Jacobi’s mental state, and it was decaying quickly.  Between the psychological strain of losing his arm, the physical pain, and the constant anxiety that the next person to come through the door might be the last person he ever saw, Jacobi felt as if he was barely clinging to sanity.  He was standing on the gallows, hood over his head, waiting.

But he was still alive.  For some reason the trapdoor hadn’t given way, he wasn’t yet swinging by his neck.  If he made it this far, three days since the Teel Mission, it was because someone had come through for him.  He had some champion behind the scenes.  He knew who it was.  It had to be Maxwell.

That thought, that someone out there was in his corner, helped.  It let him momentarily break the frozen surface of his overwhelming depression and take a breath.  It helped him keep going, keep doing this, to keep _fighting_ , even when sometimes the easy way out seemed so much more appealing.  He hated every moment of his life over the past three days.  He thought they must be the three longest days he had ever lived.  Worse, perhaps, than those immediately following the incident that cost him everything.  

Even sleep didn’t help.  He was haunted by dreams of bloody fangs and a bellow as loud as some explosions. Then he woke up in a cold sweat and cursed himself for shaking from just a dream.  And he would try to run his hands over his face…but there was only one...one shaking hand.  Reality was worse than nightmares.  

He couldn’t stand to look at himself right now.  Physical weakness, emotional weakness, psychological weakness.  Not even a whole man anymore.  Wouldn’t dad be proud?  

Sometimes, especially at night when the hospital was relatively quiet, that dark little voice would ask Jacobi if he should have let Maxwell get hit by the tiger.  That was one question he always knew the answer to.  That was one of the easiest questions he had ever been asked: _No._  

_No, never._

_Absolutely the Hell not._

_Fuck off._

He would never let _this_ or _worse_ happen to Maxwell.  If the whole thing repeated, he would still shove her out of the way.  He would still put himself in her place.  

Jacobi didn’t care about most of humanity.  He never would.  But Maxwell…Maxwell was different.  Maxwell _mattered_ .  If it came down to it, he would probably die for her. Probably? _Hell_ , he _would_ , because he couldn’t imagine living without her.

That didn’t mean he was happy with how _this_ turned out.  It didn’t make losing his arm any easier.  He hadn’t been thinking in the moment he threw his arm in front of his face.  As if _that_ could stop a nearly 700-pound animal.  He was lucky it didn’t have time to finish him off.  He should have figured out some other solution.  Some way that both he and Maxwell would be knocked clear.  Maybe he could have grabbed a heavy piece of debris and smashed the tiger’s skull in after they were both not-mauled.  He was angry with himself for failing to do that.  Kepler wouldn’t have let something like this happen.  Even his dad would have probably found some way around it.  But he hadn’t.  Jacobi was supposed to be _smarter_ than that, but somehow in the heat of the moment he hadn’t been.  

And now look at him.  Every time he saw the sickening stump of his right arm, self-disgust and anger hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut.  Often, it made him physically nauseous.  Sometimes he would stare in the bathroom mirror for what felt like hours, examining what he was now through his reflection, as if that made it any better, any less intense.  But even after three days, it was still a shock every time he saw the ugly lump of flesh.  It made him feel unreal, like he was looking out of someone else’s eyes at someone else’s life.

Insult to injury, he was, he _had been_ , right handed.  His left hand was more agile than most people’s non-dominant hands, but it wasn’t enough.  He would have called himself ambidextrous until now.  Now that he depended entirely on his left hand he realized how much he needed his right.  Everything he did felt clumsy, awkward, overbalanced.  There were certain things he just never bothered doing with his left hand.  He had trouble keeping the angle right while trying to shave and nicked himself for the first time since he was an idiot teenager.  He could write left-handed, but it was definitely messier than his normally immaculate penmanship.  And then there were the dozens of things that he realized he needed two hands to do.  Normal things.  Easy things.  Things that he never consciously thought about doing – automatic things – that were now impossible.  Out of reach.

He wouldn’t let anyone help him.  He didn’t _want_ help.  He knew how pathetic he looked.  He didn’t want anyone to see him like this.

He was jolted awake at 3 a.m. by a nightmare and a stabbing pain.  He had woken up screaming. A nurse had rushed in and after assessing the situation offered him another numbing injection of morphine.  He absolutely and forcefully refused it, throwing his pillow at the approaching nurse.  That was a mistake since it meant he had to haul his carcass out of bed to get it back.  But he was afraid of getting too much morphine.  Not only could they poison him, he realized he could end up hooked.  He was already weakened; he didn’t need a new chemical dependency, too.  He didn’t need to know what it was like to get over opioids.  

He had been horribly ashamed of how he woke up. That a dream and phantom pain had made him scream.   But as the night progressed, both the embarrassment and the pain had slowly numbed and subsided, swallowed down like bile.  Along with the pain, his fatigue had passed too.  

It was dawn.  Jacobi was sitting up in bed, watching the sky outside his window slowly pale into purples and pinks.  He wondered how much longer this would last.  Would they let him see another sunrise?  Cutter would make the call soon.  The turn of a thumb.  And Daniel Jacobi was pretty sure he wouldn’t like the direction it pointed.

Then the door swung open with such fury he thought this might finally be it.  His body tightened.  He was cornered, nowhere to run.  If they came for him now, he would have to fight.  He looked around for something to defend himself with, his options were slim and his chances were slimmer.  But there was no need for alarm. On the other side of the door there wasn’t an armed assassin or a doctor with a suspect syringe.  It was...

“Alana?” Jacobi asked. “Major Kepler?”

He relaxed at the sight of them, the breath rushing out of his lungs.  He practically crumpled against the mattress.  But his relief tightened into confusion as he looked at them. Maxwell appeared anxious and Kepler relaxed.   Behind them was a nurse; not the one that almost looked like Maxwell, but the night nurse, an older black woman with extremely sharp green eyes.  The nurse glanced from Major Kepler to Jacobi and back in confusion.

Kepler stayed in the doorway, saying nothing but nodding his head in greeting. Maxwell ran into the room.  She stopped short at the edge of the bed. “Jacobi, are you…?” Maxwell’s eyes went exactly where he didn’t want them to go, his arm…or what was left of it. She quickly looked away, first down, then up into his face. “How are you feeling?”

“Peachy,” said Jacobi, voice as dry as a desert.  One thing he found reassuring was that if Maxwell felt sorry for him, she managed to keep it out of her expression.  She didn’t look at him as if he was any different than he used to be.  She looked sad, certainly, but not pitying.  Sympathy without condescension.  She was carrying something long and thin encircled in bubble wrap.  He couldn’t quite make out the dark shape under the plastic.  

“You look like Hell,” she said frankly.  And Jacobi laughed.  He laughed for the first time since the Teel Mission.

Kepler spoke to the nurse, catching her before she could get much further into the room.  “I want you to get Dr. Wong and...who’s the surgeon on call?”

“Mark Blumenthal,” the nurse provided.

“And Dr. Blumenthal, then.  Double time,” Kepler said.

“Sir, we haven’t been alerted to your visit and—”

“ _I said_ ,” Kepler said over her, the words like knives.  He spoke slowly and clearly as he continued, enunciating every syllable, “Double...time!”  

“Yes, sir!” said the nurse, sounding slightly panicked.  She turned on her heel and fled the room.  Kepler remained in the doorway, watching her speed down the hall.  He was leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his broad chest.  Kepler didn’t take the stick out of his ass unless he was trying to prove a point.  Now he was _leaning_ and Jacobi wasn’t sure what the point was or to whom he was making it.  

He tried to find reassurance in Kepler’s expression.  The Major smirked slightly as his eyes found Jacobi’s.  There was that glint in them, a light that meant Kepler was either very happy or very angry.  Kepler was a hard man to read.  Jacobi liked to think he was better at it than most people.  He spent more time around Kepler than almost anyone else, but Kepler was a deeply private person.  There was always some wall, some barrier between Jacobi and Kepler’s innermost thoughts. Something that Jacobi couldn’t get around. He thought Kepler’s inner-most machinations were a mystery to everyone but Kepler himself.  That didn’t mean Kepler wouldn’t give you literal and figurative Hell for not being able to read his mind, he just made it very difficult for you to get there.  Jacobi knew he must have been scowling, because Kepler’s smirk broadened.

“I have something for you,” Maxwell said, drawing Jacobi’s attention away from Kepler.

Jacobi raised his eyebrows.  All of this was bizarre.  He wondered for a moment if he was imagining it.  Maybe they had shot him up with Ketamine and now he was hallucinating all of this. “Uh…and what’s that Maxwell Claus?” he asked.

Maxwell deposited the bubble wrap package onto his lap.  Without further ado she slit the tape with her pocketknife and carefully unrolled the plastic wrap.  The object inside materialized.  A slim, matte-silver shape, robotic, jointed.  At one end was a metallic peg, a few long wires ending in electrodes, and a hinge joint with black sinewy fiber.  At the other was a thin wrist, a palm, and five jointed fingers.

An arm.  A right arm.  

Jacobi gulped, trying very hard not to embarrass himself by crying. He was a proud man. He never admitted even to Maxwell why he blew up duck ponds on his days off or how his father’s insults hurt more than any of his corporal punishments.  Years of suppression and abasement meant he had mostly defeated the impulse to cry.  This time it was hard to swallow the knot in his throat.  His voice still cracked when he spoke, “Maxwell, I—” He swallowed again and Maxwell thankfully didn’t force him to go on.

“I was working against a clock so it’s not perfect. I’m already working on a second version,” Maxwell said, apologetically.

Jacobi shook his head, but he didn’t have the words to go on.  After a few seconds he managed,  “This is…” Exhale. “…Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Maxwell said.  “We’re on a very tight schedule still.”

“But,” said Kepler from the door and Jacobi looked up in alarm.  He forgot Kepler was even there, and the reminder shook the knot free from his throat. “You are looking at the most advanced prosthesis on God’s green earth. Restoring full human function, feeling, and control.   You should be all set when you come back to work.”

_Back to work._

Jacobi smiled.  

He touched the arm.  He couldn’t properly imagine it on his sad little stump.  “How’s this…how’s this gonna work?” he asked.

Maxwell launched into her explanation in her reassuringly familiar lecture voice.  She pointed to the pin, “This titanium rod is inserted into the bone.  These biosensors will be implanted into your organic tissue.  This one,” she indicated the electrode on the longest wire, “will be attached to your bicep; the muscle, not the skin.  Subdermal.  These three will reroute the organic nerves to the artificial nerves in the arm.  Through those four biosensors, your brain will be essentially looped in to whatever the pin is attached to.  Everything runs on your bioelectric current.  The arm itself can be removed.  There’s a release, but you need to apply pressure and twist it.”  She demonstrated with a slight grunt of effort, the arm and pin slid apart.  “It would be almost impossible to remove from any other angle but that of the wearer.  The pin won’t come out.  Ever.  Any updates I make will be on the arm itself.”

“What about—” Jacobi began, trying to process everything Maxwell was saying.

“I’d like to give you more time, Jacobi, but we’ve got seven hours and ten minutes to get you all hooked up before Mr. Cutter’s deadline, and I’d hate to keep the man waiting,” said Major Kepler.  No one in the room missed his implication.  When Jacobi glanced up there were three people in the hall: the doctors Kepler requested (he recognized Wong and assumed the other was Blumenthal) and the nurse.  “Everybody here is ready and rarin’ to go.”  

Jacobi nodded.  He’d rather be clueless and alive than well-informed and dead.  And for the first time in three days, he actually felt survival was a distinct possibility.  

“I’ll fill you in as soon as you come to,” Maxwell said, confidently.

“You’d better,” Jacobi answered.  But he trusted her entirely.  

He was wheeled in for surgery almost immediately.  Invoking Cutter’s name, Maxwell and Kepler delivered to Jacobi the best OR and surgical team the hospital had to offer.  Jacobi assumed some of them had been jarred awake and potentially given some sort of questionable amphetamine to get them on top of their game before 7 a.m..  Maxwell was heading the operation herself.  There would be no way for a Goddard Futuristics quack to make a mistake.  

“See you on the other side,” Maxwell said as the anesthesiologist slid the mask over his face.  He gave her a left-handed okay sign, the CRE operations signal to express he understood.  And that was the last thing he heard or did for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the home stretch now, might be finished before the next episode comes out.


	9. And A Wake Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Number] days and a wake up.  
> Phrase. Military Slang.  
> A “wake-up” refers to the last day you will be some place. If one had a week in a specific location, one would say, “six days and a wake up.”

 

As he woke up he could hear voices.  He was not alone this time.  There were people near him.

The voices were indistinct at first – so much so he wasn’t sure how many speakers there were – gibberish melting together, echoing from far away.  Slowly, they became clearer.  Cleaner.  Recognizable as two individuals, rather than a tumult.  Maxwell’s voice cut through the din.  She sounded vaguely annoyed at whomever she was speaking to, “—ould wake up any minute now, you can tell the Major _that_.”

Footsteps.  The hum of equipment.  The buzz of an intercom, a staticky voice echoing through the linoleum halls.  A heavy medicine smell.   The slick feeling of latex tubing on his skin.  Cotton sheets.  He felt heavy as feeling slowly returned; the room was loud and bright.  Jacobi opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut again and groaned.  

“Jacobi?!” Maxwell’s voice. He heard her footsteps approach the bedside.

“Shh.  Too loud,” Jacobi grumbled. He opened his eyes more slowly this time, squinting up at her in the light.

“Don’t be an asshole,” said Maxwell in the kindest tone he had ever heard.  “Can you feel this?” She asked.  She grabbed his hand, her palm on the back of his hand.

His hand? He felt her grab his hand!  

“Yeah, yeah, I can!”  He smiled.  He was exhausted, but he felt like he could breathe for the first time since the Teel Mission, like a rock had been lifted off of him.  He could feel the sheets, the shape of the mattress; he could feel the warmth of Maxwell’s skin.  He sat up as best he could, propping himself up with his left elbow so that he could see where the silver arm attached to his.

“Can you move it?” she asked.  

He responded by flexing the fingers.  The hand obeyed him immediately, but it felt slightly strange in a way he would have difficulty articulating.  There wasn’t a delay.  He could feel it move, he could feel what it touched, but it was somehow foreign, off.  The closest approximation he could think of was when he got a new pair of glasses after changing the prescription.  Nothing was wrong, but it was _different_ and would take some getting used to.  He picked up his arm and it felt a little too light.  He rotated the wrist.  He bent the elbow. That was a mistake.  He winced.

“It might hurt at the implant site,” said Maxwell.  “So be careful.”  

“I figured that out,” Jacobi answered.   

He could barely believe it was actually attached to him even though it moved when he did, even though he could follow the line from the fingers to his skin.   It was strange to think he both had an arm and didn’t.  For however unnerving as it had been to be maimed, it was still jarring to have an arm again.  Jarring in the best way possible.

There was a bandage starting under the lip of the prosthesis, around the sore stump that it covered, and continuing part way up his bicep towards his shoulder.  He peeked under it.  There was a branching row of stitches climbing like a vine of ivy partially up his arm. 

“That’s where those subdermal implants are,” Maxwell explained.

“So where the real stuff meets the fake stuff,” Jacobi said, releasing the bandage.

“They’re connecting your _organic_ muscles and nerves to your _inorganic_ ones,” she corrected him.  To Maxwell there wasn’t anything “fake” about machines.  “It’s how you’ll receive sensory information and trigger both conscious and unconscious movement.”

He kept moving the arm, turning it, bending it.  He couldn’t wait to test out his new middle finger on doctors Wong and Jones.  The silver skin was missing at the elbow and he could see the cords of muscle flex and tighten with his every move.  

“When I was attaching your nerves I switched some things around in there,” Maxwell explained.

Jacobi looked up at her in surprise, one eyebrow raised. “That doesn’t sound creepy, _at all_.  What did you do to my insides?”  

“Whoever performed the amputation didn’t sever some nerve clusters.   I cut some nerve-endings and obviously rerouted the nerves themselves.  It should help with the phantom limb syndrome,” she said.  Not sugar coating it.  Not pretending it wasn’t there.  Not treating him like he was fragile.  Frank.  He was glad for her demeanor, even if it stung to realize she knew.  

Jacobi’s other eyebrow rose to meet the first. “How’d you know…?”

“I had access to your charts, remember?  And I know how to read,” she pointed out.  

“I always forget that,” he said sarcastically.

She steamrolled on, “Will you tell me if it happens again?”

He glanced up at her, “Maxwell, don’t worry about it—”

“I’m going to worry about it!  You’re my best friend!” she answered.

Her saying that touched him in a way he wouldn’t admit out loud.  

She didn’t seem to notice the effect her words had on him, too wrapped up in her angry tirade. “And they were treating you with _morphine_ !  That is completely ridiculous!  I’m not even an MD and I know that’s a short term solution _at best!_ They’re _idiots!”_ She shook her head and let out a growl of annoyance before continuing, “You shouldn’t have another attack. You’ve got new nerves connecting you to an actual arm, the anatomy has been reshaped. But just in case...tell me.”

“Okay, okay,” he surrendered, “I will.”

“Good,” Maxwell gave him a small smile.

“You’re...my best friend too,” he said quickly. He always had trouble with things like this: being honest and open about his feelings.

“I know,” but Maxwell’s smile grew.  She didn’t pursue it any further.  

A pause in which he kept moving the arm, mystified.  “I can’t believe you put this together in three days.”

“There are some problems,” Maxwell swallowed.  “I wanted to tell you before but there just wasn’t time.  It’s not perfect.  I wouldn’t have given you this version if we weren’t on such a tight schedule.  I only had 72 hours.  The thumb clicks, but only sometimes. I need to rework it, but Cutter’s timer is…well, he’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to risk it. It works, but the noise might be annoying for a little while.  And the implant site might be a little painful, but it shouldn’t swell.  If there’s any swelling you need to tell me.”

Jacobi examined the area in question, “I’ll take notes.”

Maxwell took a deep breath and kept going, “This is only a prototype.  The exoskin isn’t quite as sensitive as I want it to be. You might not even notice the difference, but _I_ do and it’s driving _me_ insane.  By the end of the month I'll have something better.  You won’t need to go under anesthesia for this again. It’s not even an outpatient thing. I can bring it to your apartment.  Oh!” she snapped her fingers, “I almost forgot, I have a charger for you!  The next version will be compatible with your…” she trailed off and he barely noticed.  He was still struggling to take all this in.  He moved each finger; he gripped one of the electrodes from his heart rate monitor, feeling the wire under the silver fingers.  He could feel the difference between the rubber coating the wire, the sticky gauze adhering the electrode to his skin, his own warm flesh.

“Is it cool enough?” Maxwell asked.

“Getting there,” Jacobi answered.  He looked up at her and smiled.  

“You’ve got another week here to run tests and make sure there aren’t any complications”  

“Anything I should look out for?” he said.

“The usual,” she shrugged, “pus, swelling, blood, discoloring.”

“Charming.”

“But it won’t be a problem.  I want to see you in my lab as soon as they discharge you so I can fix what I need to. I might even have some updates by then.”

“Will do.”

“I’m going to get my tools.  Maybe I can fix the thumb before Cutter gets here.  Sit tight.  And play with this.” Maxwell passed him a stress toy.  “Just to get used to using your arm.”  

“When did you become my boss?” Jacobi asked, although he took it from her with his robotic hand.

“When I built your arm,” Maxwell told him before leaving the room.  

“I’ll accept that answer.  For now.”

Jacobi squeezed the ball.  It was made of hard rubber and, passing it between both hands, he wasn’t sure if there was any difference in feeling or if it was only because Maxwell mentioned it.  If he could, it was minuscule at most. He was trying to wrap his head around everything.  All he could do was stare at the arm... _his_ arm. He felt like he was in a dream.  Then he heard the quick, determined footsteps that could only be Major Kepler’s.  Jacobi looked up and watched the Major round the doorway.

“Morning, sunshine,” said Kepler in his calmest voice.

Jacobi gave him a half smirk and a low chuckle, “Morning, Major.”

“I figured I would check in. I heard the surgery was successful.” Kepler crossed to him, poised, proud, an imposing statue of a man. A giant among dwarves. The form Jacobi’s father wished he had.  The figure he never could have.  Meeting Major Kepler made Jacobi realize just how small his father really was.   

“It was definitely successful,” Jacobi answered.

Kepler nodded to the arm, “Pretty nifty gadget, don’t you think?”

Jacobi looked at his arm.  “Yes, sir,” Jacobi agreed, there wasn’t really a word for how incredible this was, nor for how thankful he was for Maxwell.  

“I’m glad I was able to buy Maxwell enough time,” Kepler said.

“Sir?” Jacobi asked, slowly looking up.

Kepler chuckled, “You don’t think Dr. Maxwell has Mr. Cutter’s ear, do you?”  He looked politely amused. “Did you really think she persuaded him all by herself?”

“I...no.  No, sir. You...stepped in for me?” Jacobi asked carefully.  It was what he had been hoping, but what he was afraid to let himself believe.

“I did,” Kepler said with a smile warmer than Jacobi had ever seen on the Major’s face.  

Jacobi stared.  Kepler had stuck his neck out for him.  Kepler had gotten Maxwell what she needed. Kepler could have suffered Cutter’s wrath, but he risked it for Jacobi.  Maxwell had saved him, but so had Kepler.  The Major even stood up to Cutter for him, faced the devil himself for Jacobi’s sorry ass.  “How’re you feeling?” Kepler crashed Jacobi’s train of thought.  

“Honestly, sir,” Jacobi said, “not too bad.”  Even if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have said otherwise.  He was afraid to show weakness around Kepler, perhaps even more afraid than he had been to show it around his father.  He didn’t want to lose Kepler’s approval.  His praise.  He didn’t want to let him down; especially not now that Kepler had implied that he directly helped to save Jacobi’s life.  

And Jacobi didn’t feel too bad. He could keep the life he loved. He could keep the respect he received in the Strategic Intelligence Division. He had two people who cared about him, and about whom he cared.  He had Warren Kepler.  He had Alana Maxwell.

“Good. Good, I'm glad.” Kepler paused awkwardly.  “Jacobi…” he trailed off.

“Yes, sir?” Jacobi asked, still squeezing the ball.  Every so often he heard the quiet clicking Maxwell mentioned.  

The pause stretched and Jacobi waited for whatever could possibly come next.  His heart pounded a little faster, hopefully, a pupil waiting for a compliment from his favorite teacher.  Kepler was looking out the window as if searching for words printed there and nowhere else.  Finally he sighed; his shoulders went slack.  Clearly, whatever strange moment they were about to have failed to materialize. Jacobi refused to acknowledge the pang of disappointment in his gut.

“Have you ever seen Maxwell's feet?” he asked finally, turning away from the window and looking back at Jacobi.

“Uh...no. I mean, I may have?  I don’t remember.  Why?” he stammered, caught completely off guard.  He wished that Kepler had said whatever he hadn’t managed to get out.

“Remind me to tell you about it sometime.”  Kepler put on his cap. “Hurry up and get well.  You get six days and a wake up in this place and I don’t want you taking any more.  You got your right hand back, now I need mine.”

“You got it, sir,” Jacobi said with a small smile.  

Kepler left and Jacobi was alone for a few minutes. He tried to untangle what just happened between himself and Kepler.  He wanted to believe, desperately, that Kepler had wanted to say _something_ to him _._ He was starting to formulate his own hypotheses.  Some of them he knew were more what he _wanted_ Kepler to say, rather than what he would have said.  Kepler was not a sentimental man, after all.

Or was he?  

That was twice in three short days that Kepler had saved him when he could easily have let him die.  And _clearly_ he wanted to say something to Jacobi, something he couldn’t get out.  Right?  He couldn’t have been  imagining that, could he?   Maybe Kepler was more than just proud of him as his commanding officer. Maybe it was deeper than that.

That was when the visitor must have rounded the curtain.  Jacobi hadn’t even heard him approach. He didn’t know the visitor was there until he spoke.

“Welcome back to the world of the living!” said a voice, and you could hear the owner smile.  Smile too widely, with too many teeth, and not as warmly as the speaker might have thought.  

Mr. Cutter.

Jacobi’s heart caught, then began to pound. His throat went dry.  He looked up and saw Mr. Cutter standing in front of him.  He was smiling benignly, but his eyes were taking Jacobi in as if he was trying to figure out just how wide he would have to unhinge his jaw to swallow him whole.  He wore gray leather shoes, an immaculate warm gray suit, and a silk tie, none of which Jacobi had ever seen before.  Jacobi didn’t know if Mr. Cutter wore the same suit twice.  

“Mr. Cutter,” stammered Jacobi.  “Wh-what can I do for you, sir?”

“Oh, nothing much, Daniel. I just wanted to check in on the SI’s finest ballistics expert, see how he’s feeling,” his eyes followed the line of Jacobi’s right arm from the fleshy shoulder to the metallic hand. “Alana has already assured me that you’ll be back to fightin’ shape by next week,” he chuckled, playing the fun boss.  Then he became very serious, “Good for you!  Most people in your position aren’t so  lucky...”  His voice was heavy with implication.  

Jacobi swallowed. Oh, he knew that.  He could hardly believe he was still alive.  Without Maxwell and Kepler, he wouldn’t be.  Cutter reached into his pocket.  Jacobi stiffened, his eyes locked on the pocket, terrified of what could possibly be hidden within.  But Cutter simply produced a 5x5 Rubik’s Cube.  After half a second of utter confusion Jacobi realized what Cutter was doing.  This was a test.  That puzzle was for Jacobi to solve using his new hand. And if he failed…?  If he failed, Cutter would probably dispose of him right then and there.   Sine missione.

“Don’t look so afraid!” chuckled Cutter, “This is just a friendly chat.”   Jacobi looked up into Cutter’s face.  His expression was calm, but there was a glint in his eye.  Jacobi was sure that Cutter was aware that Jacobi had worked out his plan.  That was probably why he only fiddled with the Cube for a few seconds before saying, “Oh, I am so bad at these!  Do me a favor and solve this for me?  It’s no big deal, but Rachel…Rachel Young, do you know her?  Down in Special Projects?”

“Uh, I don’t think so, sir,” Jacobi answered.

“Maybe I’ll introduce you two.  She’s a wonderful employee,” Cutter said.  “Well, anyway, she doesn’t think I can solve this thing without cheating. I’m afraid she might be right,” he said the last sentence in a conspiratorial undertone, as if he was letting Jacobi in on some joke or secret.  “So, I’d like you to solve it for me, Daniel.” Cutter’s gaze became a little sharper, his eyes found Jacobi’s.

“Now, sir?” Jacobi asked.

“Yes. Right now,” Cutter said with finality.  Then he tossed the toy at Jacobi. To keep it from hitting him in the face, Jacobi caught the puzzle with his new inorganic arm.  And he did it without a thought. Instinct.  Impulse.  Jacobi let out a sigh of relief.  He realized that that had been his first test.  Cutter was waiting, staring at him when Jacobi looked up. “Well?” he asked, pressing his lips together.

Jacobi nodded, “yes, sir.”

He set to work on it.  He was very good at Rubik’s Cubes and he wondered if Cutter knew that or if it was simply the closest fine motor test he had on hand. Jacobi thought it might be the former; Cutter seemed to know everything.  Both Jacobi’s hands worked together, olive and silver.  He didn’t have a timer on him, but he felt as if he was taking far longer than usual.  Under Cutter’s watchful brown eyes he felt every second. When he was done he held the completed Cube out in his artificial hand.  Cutter gestured for Jacobi to toss it to him.  Test three.  He did, throwing it underhand, and Cutter caught it.  

He glanced the Cube over without much interest before pocketing it. “You’ve signed the incident report, right?”

“Uh, no,” Jacobi said nervously.  Test four.

“Let’s fix that,” Cutter said.  “Nurse,” he called and one materialized immediately, already carrying a clipboard and pen.  Cutter took it from her and crossed to Jacobi’s side.  He held it out; Jacobi took it.  “Just sign next to the ‘x’ please.”

Jacobi glanced from Cutter to the form.  He didn’t bother reading it.  There wasn’t really a reason to:  Goddard Futuristics already owned him.  There was nothing it could say that would make his situation any better or worse.  He signed it carefully, aware of every pen stroke, every line and curve.  The result wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t right.  It was _close_ though, closer than Jacobi dared hope.  Cutter nodded at it and handed it off to the nurse again.  “Thank you so much, Daniel!” Cutter said.  

“Don’t...mention it, Mr. Cutter.”

“Oh, but I will. I’ll probably mention it _a lot_. Congratulations on the new arm,” he said kindly, offering his hand to shake.

Jacobi took it. Cutter’s grip tightened painfully and Jacobi winced. That, too, seemed to satisfy Cutter.  Test five, and Jacobi didn’t even realize it until he passed.  Cutter released his hand.  “I expect you back on Thursday, Daniel.”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi answered.  He was extremely relieved as Cutter turned to leave.  Jacobi shook his hand out, trying to lessen the pain from Cutter’s handshake.

“Alana!” Cutter said suddenly, brightly.  Jacobi looked over and saw Maxwell walking in the door with a small cloth toolkit.  She looked momentarily alarmed and glanced at Jacobi.  He smiled briefly at her, gave her a thumb’s up behind Cutter’s back.  She nodded but her posture remained stiff and anxious.  It was hard to relax with Mr. Cutter in the room.

She looked back at Cutter.  “Hello, sir,” she said.  

“I was hoping I’d run into you!  Excellent work as usual!” Cutter beamed at her, “You have the schematics and any other materials ready to be sent to medical, right?  It’s due by EOD.”

“Of course,” Maxwell nodded.  “I just sent everything over.”

“And have you signed that waiver yet?” Cutter pressed.  

“I did, sir,” Maxwell said promptly. She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and passed him a folded piece of paper. Jacobi was a little bitter it was folded. He wanted to read what it was.  

Cutter glanced over the document Maxwell had given him, too quickly for Jacobi to see, although he tried.  “Everything seems to be in order,” said Cutter cheerily, placing the paper in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I'll see you later, Alana. Daniel, rest up. Remember, Thursday, 9 a.m. sharp!” He cast that grin back at Jacobi, then left the hospital room.

Maxwell and Jacobi were quiet for a moment until they were sure he was gone and out of earshot, “Can you pop your arm off for me?”

“That’s the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re probably going to hear it a lot more often from now on,” Maxwell said, almost apologetically. He did as he was told, following Maxwell’s instructions.  It was slightly awkward, but he assumed he would get used to it.

“What was that paper you gave Mr. Cutter?” Jacobi asked as he passed her the arm.  She knelt next to the bed and unfolded her toolkit. 

“Oh, I had to sign over the rights to the prosthesis to Goddard Futuristics,” she said selecting her tools.  

“Wow, that sucks,” Jacobi said sympathetically, not that it was surprising. There had to be something in it for Goddard.

“It’s no big deal, I don’t need them.” She carefully disconnected the joints of the thumb.  It was still joined by the tendon.  “They’ll probably sit on the tech for a few years until they’re sure it’s as good as it can be. Some doctors might poke you until we’ve got a model everyone is happy with.”

“I’m glad you made me a part of this,” Jacobi said sarcastically, watching her as she worked.  

“Hey, I’m your savior!” she said pointing at him with her tweezers, “You either get to be Goddard’s guinea pig or a charred corpse.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacobi said laughing, “you’re my what?”

“Savior!” she repeated in an almost sing-song voice.

“Thinking a little highly of yourself, huh?”

“You don’t get to say that because _I_ just saved your life.”

“Okay, sure, but I am not calling you my savior,” Jacobi said.

“But you _could_ and you _should,”_ said Maxwell. She was carefully reassembling the thumb now, piece by piece.  

He watched her, almost mesmerized.  So much of this seemed surreal.  Maxwell was holding an arm – _his_ arm – separate from his body because she had to build him an arm because his real one was eaten by a tiger owned by a drug lord living in a South American rainforest. It was like some kind of terrible screwball comedy. It struck him that after all these years in ballistics, when he _did_ lose a limb it had nothing to do with bombs or missiles.  Then something came back to him. Something from a locker room conversation with Maxwell over a year ago now. He chuckled.  

“What’s so funny?” Maxwell asked.  

“Well, _savior,_ you do owe me fifty big ones," Jacobi told her.

“What?” Maxwell glanced up at him, “Why?  For what?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot our bet,” Jacobi said, mock-offended.  “I didn’t blow my arm off.”

“Oh my God,” Maxwell said, laughing too.  “You’re joking!”

“Come on, Maxwell, pay up.”

“I’m your savior and you're demanding money from me?!” It was her turn to fake offense.  

“Yeah. It was a bet. That’s how bets work,” Jacobi pointed out.  

“Try this,” Maxwell said.  She offered the arm to him.

He snapped it back on – it was far easier to get the arm on than off – and stretched the fingers a few times.  He didn’t hear the click.   

“You still owe me $35 from when you bet me I couldn’t make a microwave sentient,” Maxwell reminded him, standing up.

“This bet is older than that one,” Jacobi said, looking up from his arm.

“Why does that matter?” asked Maxwell incredulously.

“Fine, fine.  Gimme fifteen.”

Maxwell sighed and got out her wallet.  She slapped two bills into the robotic palm Jacobi held out to her. He marveled for a moment at being able to feel them in his hand, then deposited them on the bedside table. “I took the liberty of ordering a pizza for us,” Maxwell said.  

“Good,” said Jacobi, “I’m sick of this hospital crap.”

“You know, you haven’t commented on the name yet,” Maxwell said.  

“The name?” Jacobi raised his eyebrows.

“Underside of your ulnar styloid process,” Maxwell explained.

“Uh…” Jacobi looked at her blankly.

“Where your forearm meets your wrist.” She raised her arm and pointed to the spot on the underside of her arm.  

Jacobi rotated the robotic wrist and pushed up his glasses to read the tiny print there. He laughed. _“Rocobi 1.0.”_

Maxwell grinned, “I liked the pun.”

“I like this one better than most of the ones you come up with,” Jacobi told her, looking up.  “Rocobi,” he snorted.  “That took what?  Five minutes?”

“More like two,” Maxwell said.

Jacobi examined the letters for a moment. “Kepler was in here earlier,” Jacobi told her, glancing up.

“I thought he would be.  He kept asking about when you would come to.”

“Really?” Jacobi asked.  

“Yeah.  He likes you, Jacobi.”

Jacobi nodded, adding the information Maxwell just gave him to the knot of his relationship with Kepler.

“Have you ever been in his car?” Maxwell asked.  

“Which?  The Cobra?” Jacobi slowly smirked.  He’d been in a couple of Kepler’s cars.  The Shelby Cobra was his favorite.  Every time he was in it, Kepler brought them to that amazing edge, like before you jump out of a plane or off a cliff, the feeling just on the comfortable side of fear of immediate death.  Kepler was an excellent driver, but he also pushed road rules to their absolute limit.  Shelby Cobras were famous for their speed and Kepler was glad to demonstrate why.  There were certainly times that Kepler knocked the experience over into genuine fear of death, but when you came out the other side, that was part of the fun.  

“Yeah,” Maxwell said.  “The Cobra.”

“It’s great, isn’t it?”

“That’s one word for it,” Maxwell said dryly.  

“Well,” Jacobi conceded, “it’s less great when he takes a corner so tight you feel like you’re gonna either go flying into space or throw up.”   

“That was my experience,” Maxwell answered.  

“Still pretty fun, though,” Jacobi grinned.

“I would argue otherwise—” Her phone buzzed and she glanced down at it.  “Oh, the pizza’s here.  I’ll be right back.” She turned to go. 

Jacobi called her back. “Hey, Alana, wait.”

She turned, “Hm?”

He took a deep breath.  “Thanks,” he told her seriously.  “Really. Thank you.  Thanks.  A lot.”

“You saved my life at Teel’s place.  You would save my life again. You don’t have to thank me for anything, Daniel.” She crossed to the door, then turned back,  “No, you know what?  Actually _do_ , do thank me.  I _am_ your savior.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Kepler, playing to Jacobi's daddy issues...
> 
> This chapter and the final one are both going up today!


	10. Bravo Zulu, Tango Mike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bravo Zulu  
> Phrase. Military. Acronym.  
> Adopted from the Allied Tactical Publication 1, B indicating the signal table, Z being the last code on the table. “BZ” (or “Bravo” and “Zulu” in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet) is a sign off indicating a job well done.
> 
> Tango Mike  
> Phrase. Military. Acronym.  
> “T” and “M” in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. Acronym meaning “Thanks Much” used both to thank someone and as a common radio sign off.

Time passed.  

Jacobi and Maxwell remained monsters, but they remained monsters together.  They did their jobs.  They did them well.  

Jacobi and Maxwell became two of the most revered members of the Strategic Intelligence Division. Ever.  Major Kepler became a Colonel.  His reputation was, if anything, even more stellar.

Maxwell cut her hair to make it easier to deal with.  Jacobi let his grow a little, just long enough that you could see its natural curl, Maxwell wanted him to let it get the way it had been when he was a kid after Jacobi described it as “a nightmare Jewfro,” but apparently that wasn’t happening. Kepler’s hair got a little grayer.  

Maxwell thought she looked a little more tired, that there were circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there before.  The scars the tiger left on Jacobi’s chest had faded away almost entirely, just thin white lines that you probably wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know what to look for.  She hadn’t been quite so skilled as the professional surgeons with the surgical scars on his arm; you could still see them, a darker ladder of skin climbing up from the artificial elbow.  Kepler’s eyes got a little colder.  Two years and they all looked much older somehow.  As if one year in Strategic Intelligence was a decade outside.  

  _Rocobi_ was now on version 3.3.  The 2s had been bulkier than the ones, more fleshed out.  The robotic muscle at the elbow was no longer visible.  She found a suitable exoskin and solved the sensitivity issue.  But, ultimately, the exoskin wasn’t strong enough to withstand the paces Jacobi put it through and the wrist was a little stiff.  The 3s were perfect.  The wrist problem was fixed.  The exoskin retained its sensory sensitivity but was stronger, and burn proof.  Jacobi had yet to find its melting point, which Maxwell was _very_ proud of.  

Version 3.0 had been too difficult to examine by any means short of removing it.  But by 3.3, she found a way to make the skin both sturdy and easy-access with utility ports for emergency assessment and tuning.  The skin was molded tightly over the musculature.  The charging port was compatible with his smartphone charger and was discreetly positioned on the inside of the arm, as opposed to the earlier versions, which too easily caught on objects and popped open.  The 3s had an LED power indicator on the outside of the arm, since Jacobi ignored the LCD display that had been inlaid on the inside and more than once ended up dead-armed and annoyed.  

The biggest difference between 3.2 and 3.3 was that the latter had been designed specifically for life in space.  With all the magnets around, she had to make sure they didn’t interfere with the electric current.  She wanted to make sure everything would function perfectly in microgravity or even actual 0g.  By the time they lifted off from Canaveral, she was confident _Rocobi 3.3_ would be in better shape than Jacobi’s organic arm.  Even Jacobi had stopped referring to them as his “real” and “fake” arm by now.  In Jacobi’s vocabulary, “the” arm became “my” arm.  

The USS _Urania_ was the best Goddard Futuristics had to offer. The _Hephaestus,_ not so much. Maxwell was just glad that she, Jacobi, and Colonel Kepler got to sleep on the _Urania_ , which she wasn’t afraid would just randomly explode.

She liked Hera, she liked her a lot.  So much so that she was worried Jacobi’s characteristic petty jealousy might become a problem. He had nothing to be afraid of, no one could replace Jacobi, but it was the first time she had another friend, and definitely the first time she had someone to talk shop with who wasn’t one of Goddard's best-behaved AIs. Hera had personality; it was why she was stuck up there, but Maxwell appreciated it.  But unfortunately, Maxwell knew it was only a matter of time before that came back to bite Hera. Maxwell just hoped she didn’t have to be the one who had to hurt the autopilot.  

That didn’t mean she trusted Hera to keep the _Hephaestus_ from just exploding. It didn’t even need Jacobi’s bombs for that. Between Eiffel’s ineptitude, Minkowski’s naïveté, Hilbert/Selberg/Whoever’s slimy spinelessness, and Lovelace’s unadulterated insanity, it was a powder keg even without Hera’s…issues and the massive cracks they had to fix when they docked.  The _Hephaestus_ was a death trap; as Maxwell learned when she was nearly cooked alive by the engine.

Maxwell found Jacobi early the next morning, before his rotation started. He was standing just inside the bathroom door, still in his pjs – a pair of wooly flannel pajama bottoms and a torn t-shirt – his toothbrush clenched between his teeth, and a look of extreme concentration furrowing his brow.  He was examining his arm.

“Something wrong?” She asked nervously.

Jacobi glanced up, picking his glasses out of the air where he’d left them and putting them on.  He shook his head.  He held up one finger, “one sec.”  He spat into his rag, took a long gulp of water from his water bottle, rinsed his toothbrush in the same, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  “Why are you up?”

She shrugged, “I just woke up.  I got a clean bill of health, remember?”

“You don’t even have to work today,” Jacobi pointed out.  

“I’m fine,” she assured him.

“Alana—”

“ _Daniel_ , really, I’m fine,” she said firmly.

“Alright, waste your day off,” he sighed.  

“What’s wrong with your arm?” she asked.  

“I thought I heard hissing.”

“Hissing?” Maxwell repeated.  “There’s nothing that should hiss.  Nothing that _can_ hiss.  It was probably the ship.”

“I’ve never heard it before,” Jacobi said.

“You never listen,” Maxwell tisked.  

“I listen plenty,” said Jacobi, crossing his arms.   She took his right hand, forcibly unfolding his arms from his chest.  He sighed, but let her pull it — and him — toward her.  She turned his arm over. “It’s the _Hephaestus_ idiots who don’t listen.  They have no idea what they’re doing.  They could have killed you yesterday!”

“That might have been what they were going for,” Maxwell said, she pulled one the barrettes from her hair.  “Does this hurt?" She asked jabbing the barrette into his hand while he was looking away.

“Ow!  Yes!” Jacobi tried to yank his hand out of her grasp and the fingers curled reflexively. She held tight.  

“Good,” she muttered.

“You said it was the ship,” Jacobi whined.

“I’m making sure nothing else is wrong,” she said.  She popped open one of the three access panels.  Nothing looked amiss.

“If they try to hurt you again—”  Jacobi began.

“They won’t,” Maxwell said. “Minkowski doesn’t have the guts.  Twist your wrist.”

He obeyed her. “Hilbert might.”  It looked fine and she closed that piece of panel.  She opened a higher access panel.  

“Screw Hilbert,” Maxwell said irritably.  “Have you heard how he talks to Hera?  Bend your elbow.”

“Hadn’t noticed,” said Jacobi dryly, again following her instructions.  Satisfied, she closed the panel.

“Don’t be that way, Daniel.” She opened the back of his hand.

“Don’t be _what_ way?” he asked.

“Don’t be a baby.  Make a fist,” Maxwell instructed him.

“I am not being a baby!” he asserted.  He made a fist and asked, “Is something wrong with it?”

“It seems fine,” she answered.  

“So what are you looking for?”

“Nothing,” she said.  “I’m just being careful.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.”

Jacobi sighed, “ _Fine_.”  

When she was satisfied, she closed that, too.  “I wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt it yesterday,” she muttered.  

“Yesterday when?” Jacobi asked, even though he knew exactly what she meant.

Maxwell didn’t say anything.  She moved past him to brush her own teeth. She untethered her toothbrush.

“When?” He asked again, hovering in the hall.

“You know when,” Maxwell said, using her water bottle to soak her toothbrush and squeezing out a dollop of toothpaste.

“Do you mean, when I saved your life?” He asked with a smirk.

“Yes,” Maxwell said heavily, “when you saved my life.”  

“When I became…”

“Go ahead and say it,” Maxwell rolled her eyes.  She began brushing her teeth.

“Your savior. Because I am. Your savior. I saved you, making me your savior,” he grinned at her.  

“Yes, _yes_ , I _get_ it,” Maxwell groaned around her toothbrush.

“You get that I’m your savior?”

“I can’t help but think I may have partially brought this on myself.”

“When you said the same thing 900 times two years ago?” Jacobi asked.  “Yeah, that might have had something to do with it.”

“I don’t think I was _that_ insistent.  But I did save your life,” she spat into her rag and removed her water bottle from the box on the shelf.  She took a gulp.  “I was your savior.”

“And I saved yours, soooo…”

“So...you’re mine, too.”  There was a low hissing sound. Maxwell immediately knew what it was and chuckled. “Was that what you were talking about?” Maxwell asked.

“Yeah…” Jacobi said.

“That’s steam from the kitchen.  Colonel Kepler’s probably making breakfast.  But good job,” Maxwell said.  Having rinsed her mouth and cleaned her toothbrush, she squeezed out a ball of water and pushed it towards Jacobi.  

“Don’t talk to your savior that way,” Jacobi laughed, dodging the orb.  

Sooner or later, they _would_ run out luck.  Statistically speaking, it would probably be sooner.  They just lived too close to the edge for it to be otherwise.  They were SI-5; they didn’t live long.  Kepler was an anomaly, and both she and Jacobi knew that the cracks in Kepler’s sanity were starting to show.  

Maybe this would be it for them.  One final mission.  Or maybe they would spit in the face of death once again.  

However it went, she was glad to be here with Jacobi at the end of the universe.  

There was no one else she would rather be a monster with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays, you guys!

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by [daniel-jacobi](https://daniel-jacobi.tumblr.com/)'s drawings of, well, Daniel Jacobi with a prosthetic/cybernetic arm. They are a super cool person and let me write this fic using their design. Thank you for the inspiration and all the Wolf 359 conjecture/discussion. :)


End file.
